Syntagmatic vs paradigmatic dichotomy as the key factor in the formation of Russian Studies in 19th century

Abstract

The well-established syntagmatic vs paradigmatic dichotomy marks the formation of linguistics and characterizes its paradigm at a specific stage in its history. In Russia, the period of 1820-s–1850-s was the time when the Russian Studies were established as a science and the prominent philologists Nikolai Grech, Alexander Vostokov, Ilya Davydov, and Feodor Buslaev composed their benchmark grammars of the contemporary Russian language. The analysis of the way the syntagmatic vs paradigmatic dichotomy was shaped in their grammars might provide an important insight in terms of the development of Russian Studies as a scientific discipline.