Amateur linguistics

The term “amateur linguistics” was introduced into a wide scientific revolution by a prominent Russian linguist, Andrei Anatolyevich Zaliznyak ^[4] . Also, other terms were proposed to describe this or similar concepts: “cryptolinguistics” (V.N. Bazylev ^[8] , later the author preferred the term “cryptophilology” ^[9] ), “linguistics of resentment ” and “linguistics of the New Paradigm” ( Patrick Serio ) ^[10] , “folk linguistics” (“folk linguistics”) - by analogy with folk history (D. Yu. Polichenko) ^[11] , “pseudolinguistics” ^[2] (by analogy with pseudoscience ), “ anti-linguistics ” ^[2] ,“ naive linguistics ” ^[2] ,“ pop linguistics ” ^[2] ,“ linguistics ”(accordingly, amateur linguists are called linguists and) ^{[4] [11]} .

In Western European and American linguistics, the terms “folk linguistics” (English), “Volkslinguistik” and “Laienlinguistik” (German), “linguistique populaire” (French) ^[4] became widespread.

According to M. R. Shumarina, “naive linguistics” is not identical to the term “amateur linguistics”: naive linguistics is “spontaneous ideas about language and speech activity that have developed in the ordinary human consciousness” ^[4] .

Academician A. A. Zaliznyak in his article “On Professional and Amateur Linguistics” indicates that “an essay on the language is amateur, if it contains at least one of the following statements”:

• The sound A can pass into the sound B - without specifying the language and the period of time.
• Vowels do not matter, only the “backbone of consonants” is significant.
• The word A was obtained as a result of the reverse reading of the word B.
• Such an ancient inscription from one country or another is read in Russian.
• The name of a certain city or such a river of a distant country is simply a distorted Russian word B (from which it can be seen that this country was once inhabited by Russians or they mastered it).
• Such languages ​​originated from Russian, and modern, and not its ancient predecessor .

Other features noted by Zaliznyak ^[12] :

• Ignoring established scientific facts: for example, when one sound changes to another, a large group of words, not one word, changes. And even if these facts are clarified, they still ignore them, because the achievements of science become an insurmountable obstacle on the way to fantasy ^[13] .
• Unspokenness and lack of rigor.
• Work with modern language, despite the fact that a century ago it was different.
• Ignoring the composition of the word (a typical example is Ukraine and ukry ). The bearer of meaning is the root of the word , and it is much more important than the prefix or the ending .

M. R. Shumarin gives the following properties of "amateur linguistics" ^[4] :

• Claims possession of "secret" knowledge .
• Through this knowledge, seeks to regulate the behavior of society .
• Insists on the indisputability of their findings.
• Subject his interpretations to a certain ideological setting, ignoring facts that are inconsistent with the basic idea.
• Uses the "poetic" methods of interpreting language material.

And concludes: "It is clear that the listed <...> signs are typical signs of a myth " ^[4] .

D. Yu. Polinichenko summarizes the methodological features of amateur linguistics in three points:

• inattention to language facts;
• lack of logical rigor in constructions;
• ignoring the laws revealed by the science of language ^[11] .

Vladimir Pakhomov, editor-in-chief of Gramota.ru Internet portal, believes that the main sign of an amateur linguist (lingvofrika) is his reasoning about the history of a language , about sacral codes and secret meanings. Lingvofriks are distinguished by underlined disregard for scientific evidence, heightened emotionality (sometimes going beyond the bounds of decency), an appeal to an addressee who shares a certain ideology, and also aggression ^[14] .

Before the advent of the comparative historical method, most etymologies had a completely fantastic character. The Russian poet and philologist of the 18th century , V.K. Trediakovsky ( 1703 - 1769 ) believed that the name of the country Norway is a distorted form of the word “top”, since this country is located at the top of the geographical map , and the name Italy goes back to the word “delete”, because that this country is many miles away from Russia ^[15] . The etymology toolkit gave a comparative historical method - a set of techniques that allow to prove the kinship of languages ​​and to reveal the facts of their ancient history.

In the USSR , a pseudoscientific new doctrine of the language of Nicholas Marr , an archeologist and a historian by education, was widely spread, from the late 1920s to 1950, enjoying state support.

In Turkey, at the time of Ataturk, it was advanced and received government support for the so-called “Solar language theory”, in which it was stated that all languages ​​of the world originated from Turkish ( Turkic ) ^[16] .

Perhaps the first work on amateur linguistics in Russia was the treatise “Three Discourses” by the poet Vasily Trediakovsky ( 1757 ), in which he, relying on his own amateur etymologies, proves that Slavic was the oldest European language , for example: Scythians ( Scythians ) were produced from wanderings, Caledonia - from Chladonia, the Iberians are upers, “so that they are both rested on all sides by the seas”, the Amazon of Antiope is explained as Entavopa (that is, the crying - loud), Menalippus - Menelyuba, the Amazons — are condemned ( that is, manly omen), the Vikings , as a pre-variteli, Odoacer (Odoatser) as a blanket-king, it is hoped, Sire. Philologist L.V. Pumpyansky , describing such constructions as “etymological arbitrariness”, concludes: “With such methods it was not difficult to prove that all ancient Europe was originally inhabited by Slavs , and the Varangian princes were Slavs of Scandinavia who arrived to the Slavs of Novgorod ...” ^[17] .

Amateur linguistics has received wide application in “ New Chronology ”, the pseudoscientific theory of mathematics of Anatoly Fomenko and his followers. And if in the early works of A. T. Fomenko linguistic and philological questions occupied a modest place, then in the book “New Chronology” their role is already so great that this book can be regarded as an essay not only on history , but also on linguistics and philology ^[18] .

The ideas of amateur linguistics are common in various areas of the modern Russian neo - pagan movement. Thus, a curious example of a pseudo-linguistic doctrine that has acquired a quasi-religious character is the “Worldwide Literacy”, created by A. F. Shubin-Abramov, supposedly “carrier of generic memory” and “keeper of secret knowledge of the initiated.” The essence of the theory of the “All-Light Literacy” is that ordinary people read the letters of any alphabet as “flat”, in fact, these letters in the works of the classics and ancient writings are not “flat”, but spatially defined, as if volumetric projections onto a plane . Many leaders, ideologists and popularizers of neo-paganism, including the translators of the Veles Book ^[19], are engaged in amateur linguistics in one form or another.

D. Yu. Polinichenko identifies three main areas in "modern Russian amateur linguistic thought" ^{[7] [20]} :

• interpretation of the alphabet and amateur phonosemantics - “decryption” of any word of any natural language transcribed by the letters of the Russian alphabet . At the same time, the non-identity of phonemes of different linguistic systems is assumed to be insignificant, if it is realized at all, and the author’s folk language of the folk-linguistic theory and his alphabet become a kind of semiotic standard - the sign system , which reveals the "true" meaning of signs and their combinations of all other languages.
• deciphering and reading ancient inscriptions (amateur epigraphy ) - attempts to decipher written monuments of the past, which include both recognized as deciphered (for example, Hittite inscriptions ), and monuments of ancient writing that remain a mystery to science. Some authors try to read the image as captions without the status of captions.
• etymological and linguistic historical studies — glottogenesis , the origin and evolution of writing systems and various idio-ethnic languages, as well as questions of etymology and lexical semantics .

• Myths about the origin of languages

• Burlak S. A. Pseudoscience on Language: Differential Diagnosis // Troitsky Variant - Science , July 2, 2013, No. 132, p. ten.
• Burlak S. A. You yourself are hidden! (Once again about amateur linguistics) // Antropogenesis.ru
• Efremov V. On the new forms of naive linguistics in the Internet era // Anthropological forum . 2014. № 21.
• Zaliznyak A. A. From notes on amateur linguistics
• Kamchatnov A.M.A.S. Shishkov and modern lingvophics // Native Ladoga. № 4 (34) , 2015. p. 26-68.
• About amateur linguists: Is Siberia “the north” or “se ber?”? Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 // Antropogenesis.ru
• On professional and amateur linguistics Academician Andrei Anatolyevich Zaliznyak // “ Science and Life ”, № 1 and № 2, 2009.
• Polinichenko D.Yu. Neopaganism and Amateur Linguistics in Modern Russia // Jazyk a kultúra, 2012, No. 12.
• Polinichenko D. Yu. Amateur linguistics: problems of nomination and definition of the phenomenon // Voronezh Bulletin. state un-that. Series: Linguistics and Intercultural Communication. - 2011. - № 2. - p. 187-191.
• Turkova K. Grammarnazi live, flourish and multiply // Orthodoxy and the world . December 31, 2014
• Khrolenko A.T. Fundamentals of modern philology: studies. manual / scientific. ed. O. V. Nikitin . - M.: FLINT, 2013. - p. 50-56.
• Forum: Science and Pseudoscience // Anthropological forum . 2013. № 18