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        The Prague Linguistic Circle arose from small beginnings, but it grew systematically and organically because it was no product of chance. It originated because there was acute intellectual need for it, and it arose exactly at the moment when the situation of international research was getting ripe for an attempt of the kind.
        If I am to give a pragmatic account of how all this happened I can but start with a few words about myself. Already as a university student I was attracted more by a horizontal [i.e., synchronistic, J.V.] than by a vertical [i.e. diachronistic, J.V.] view of language. In this I was a pupil of those earlier German linguists who were not oriented in the Neogrammarian direction, especially of Georg von der Gabelentz and Ph. Wegener, and of two independently thinking non-German linguists, the Englishman Henry Sweet and the Dane Otto Jespersen. The conviction of my going in the right direction was growing in me as time went on, and I did not hesitate to declare it openly several years before de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale was to be published. In 1909 I started my lectureship at the university by giving a whole year’s course on the analysis of contemporary English. Also, my lecture delivered at the Royal Czech Society of Sciences on February 6, 1911 (and published in the Bulletin of the Society under the title “On the Potentiality of the Phenomena of Language” in that same
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year[2] was based on the idea that in linguistics the analytical procedure going from statics to dynamics [i.e., from synchrony to diachrony, J.V.] is the safest. I was convinced that only in the analysis of contemporary language do we have at our disposal materials that are reasonably complete, while in the past the materials are the more insufficient the further back we go. I found that the reality must have been much more complex than current historical grammar would have us believe, as the materials of the old stages of languages present, as a rule, only a very simplified picture of those languages. For these reasons, my analyses of English, published since 1910 in the periodical Sborník filologický, were concerned with contemporary language. In them I increasingly realized the advantages of the procedure going from the needs of expression to the means of language by which these needs are satisfied, or, to put the matter more briefly, of the procedure going from the function to the form, in other words, of the functional method.
        A bad disease of the eyes by which I was affected in October, 1922, and which considerably limited my ability to read, made me supplement my interest in Colloquial English with a parallel interest in Colloquial Czech, which could be studied by hearing only. Thus, the year 1923 witnessed the publication of two of my contributions to the analysis of Colloquial Czech. Besides, in that same year, the Ministry of Education answered favorably my application for an assistant to help me with my research work, so difficult now because of my disease. My daily meetings with Dr. Bohumil Trnka, who had been appointed to the post, were to become even more stimulating for me than my earlier contact with my students. Trnka’s interest in linguistic theory had been directed by K. Skala-Rocher[3] to concrete problems of historical grammar; it was necessary to extend his interest to problems of general linguistics and to Contemporary English. This led me to the writing of the papers on the essence of the sentence (published in 1923) and, a year later, on the function of the subject in Modern English (both papers were published in the periodical ČMF).
        In those years, I became more closely acquainted with Roman Jakobson, a young graduate of Moscow University, who came to Prague in June, 1920, and called on me for the first time in September that year. This very well-informed and extremely clever young Russian brought with him from Moscow vivid interest in the very kind of linguistic problems which had been at the center of my
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attention, and he greatly encouraged me in my linguistic efforts by supplying me with evidence that elsewhere, too, such problems were being persistently attacked. Thus, at the time when my ailing eyesight made me concentrate on theoretical thinking, I had by my side two young linguists whose research orientation was akin to mine. The lack of close contact with the Prague philological workers, which used to depress me, was felt with equal intensity now by Jakobson, who had been accustomed to a very different atmosphere in his pre-Prague years. We often discussed the need for a discussion and working center for young linguists, and it was quite natural that we attempted to form it. I have noted down that on March 13, 1925, I invited to a gathering Jakobson and Trnka, and with them S. Karcevskij, who, later on, was to become lecturer in Russian in Geneva but at that time still acted as a master of the Russian Senior High School in Prague. On October 14, that same year, I again invited Jakobson, Trnka, Karcevskij, and with them B. Havranek, who, at that time, was preparing for his lecturership on Comparative Slavic linguistics. The participants in this meeting can still recall its program. For it I had worked out a paper on new currents and tendencies in linguistic research (which later- on November 9, 1925— I read before the Royal Czech Society of Sciences, and ultimately published in English in the volume dedicated to J. Zubatý).[4] The main theses of that paper, outlining the directions for a new approach to linguistic problems, were subjected to discussion as an ideological basis for the linguistic center which, with our joint forces, we were resolved to establish in Prague. The form of our joint activities was to be, in the beginning, meetings with lectures followed by discussions.
        The opportunity to launch such meetings turned up in the fall of 1926. At that time, Prague was visited by Dr. Henrik Becker, a young German linguist, who was then following an interesting parallel between the formation of Modern Standard Czech and Modern Standard Hungarian. He was the son of a Romance scholar of Leipzig, his mother was a Frenchwoman, and as his father, before coming to Leipzig, had taught at the universities of Budapest and Vienna, Dr. Becker had a great practical command of modern European languages. He made use of it in his comparative analysis of the communicative abilities of various languages, and during his Prague stay he was fully engaged in observing how European languages, under the influence of a common European culture, are becoming “Europeanized.” He wanted
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to report his findings in Prague to a meeting of younger linguists. Having learned of this from Trnka, who had become acquainted with Becker not long before during his working stay in Leipzig, I organized a meeting in my faculty office (which, at that time, was in the old faculty premises, 4, Veleslavinova street). It took place on October 6, 1926, in the afternoon, and there were six people present: apart from Becker and myself, there were, of course, Jakobson, Trnka, and Havranek, and, in addition to this, the Orientalist scholar Jan Rypka, then a lecturer at Prague University. We attentively listened to Becker’s lecture, entitled “Der europäische Sprachgeist,” and then thoroughly discussed the speaker’s theses. All of us enjoyed the meeting and gladly proceeded to the organization of further meetings. It should be added that already in arranging the first meeting I expected these gatherings to become a regular institution. Thus the meeting of October 6, 1926, was really the first of the Prague Linguistic Circle.
        The new linguistic center witnessed an increased number of meetings, and of speakers as well as listeners. In the period between October, 1926, and June, 1927, nine meetings with lectures and discussions were held; in the following season, however, this number was already reached by the end of March, 1928. At the end of June that year the number of lectures had gone up to eleven, despite the fact that in April no meeting took place owing to the Hague International Congress of Linguists held that month. Among the speakers one found, naturally, in quick succession all those who had participated in the first meeting. Already in the first two years one could observe a feature which became so characteristic of the Prague Circle—the participation of foreign, especially Russian, linguists. Between October 1926 and June 1928 the list of speakers—some of whom, it should be added, delivered two or even three lectures—included eight Czechs (Havranek, Ilek, Trnka, Oberpfalcer, Mukařovský, Mathesius, Rypka, Buben), five Russians (Jakobson, Karcevskij, Trubetzkoy, Tomaševskij, Bogatyrev), two Frenchmen (Tesnière and Brun) and one German (Becker). Three lectures were delivered by Jan Mukarˇovsky´, whose name was entered for the first time in the list of those present at the third meeting (December 2, 1926). But although the number of the listeners was increasing, there was a tendency, in the initial period, not to increase the number of participants too quickly. In the year 1926-27 the average number of the participants, including the speakers, was slightly over seven; in 1927-28
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slightly over nine. The limited number of participants made it possible to continue, for a reasonably long time, the pleasant custom, willingly agreed on since the beginning of the Circle’s existence, of holding not only the regular meetings with lectures and discussions (convened on the premises of the English department of the University) but also less formal meetings, of which no minutes were recorded, in the households of the individual members.
        As for the themes of the twenty lectures given in the first two years, no less than three quarters of them were concerned with linguistic problems, which were always treated from the general angle, even if some of the themes were more specialized. Already in those two years, however, one can find such themes as that of a linguistically oriented theory of poetry (Mukařovský, Tomaševskij); and one lecture was devoted to parallel problems of linguistics and ethnology (Bogatyrev).
        The group which started its activities so vigorously would certainly have thriven well on the lines laid down the first two years of its activities, even if no outside intervention had influenced it. But even before the said two years had elapsed the development of the Circle was to be very strongly, and very profitably, influenced by an international linguistic movement.
        It was really a most fortunate idea of the Dutch linguists of the Catholic University of Nijmegen to make the best of the changing situation in linguistic research by organizing the First International Congress of Linguists at The Hague in April, 1928, and, moreover, to ask its participants in advance to answer six really essential questions concerned with linguistic research in the most general sense of the word. The unanimity of the Prague Circle’s linguistic thinking was evidenced by the fact that out of the thirteen theses answering the fourth question, concerning the most suitable method of complete practical analysis of any language from the grammatical viewpoint, no less than nine were presented by four members of the Circle, who responded thus without any previous mutual agreement.
        Apart from Jakobson, Trubetzkoy, Karcevskij and myself, the only linguists to answer this question were the two representatives of the Geneva school, Ch. Bally and A. Sechehaye, and Professor Hestermann of Hamburg. As the views of the Prague Linguistic Circle had much in common with those of the representatives of the Geneva school, it occurred to me that it might be profitable to merge our theses into a joint program of new linguistics and
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present it collectively to the Congress. For this reason we organized in one of The Hague’s cafes an evening meeting with the two Geneva scholars and with Professor Meyer-Lübke, who was to preside on the following day at the Congress session in which the theses presented to the fourth question were to be discussed. We reached a quick agreement and the result of our negotiations was that instead of presenting the individual theses separately, as they can be read in the little volume of the Propositions distributed to the members of the Congress (pp. 36-66) and in the Proceedings of the Congress (Actes du Premier Congres international des linguistes, Leiden, no date, pp. 33-64), a joint program of linguistic analysis was worded and signed by representatives both of the Prague Circle (Jakobson, Mathesius, Trubetzkoy) and of the Geneva school (Bally, Sechehaye). This joint formulation of the principles of the new linguistics, printed in the Proceedings of the Congress on pp. 85-86, was presented to the plenary session of the Congress on April 12 and approved by it without any opposition. For the Prague Linguistic Circle this fact was significant in more than one respect. It became clear to us even more than before that in the international context we were by no means isolated with our theoretical views, and we became convinced that these views had grown so ripe that we could present them to our foreign colleagues; besides, we won friends and allies abroad.
        One could draw heavily on the experience gained in The Hague International Congress of Linguists when preparing the participation of the Circle in the First International Congress of Slavicists, held in Prague in October, 1929. It was not the first time that the members of the Circle presented themselves to the Czech research world—as early as April, 1929, some of them had lectured at the First Conference of the Czechoslovak Senior High School Teachers held in Prague. The present writer gave a lecture there on Functional Linguistics, B. Havránek on the function of the standard literary language, J. Mukarˇovsky´ on new trends in the study of poetry, and B. Trnka on the characterology of Modern English (see the Proceedings of the Conference).[5] This, however, was a mere episode in the history of the Circle. The preparation for the Slavist Congress was to take most of the time between the fall of 1928 and October 1929, because the Circle decided to prepare for the Congress its own publications and its own theses. The publications presented to the Congress were the first two volumes of the series Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague, out of which the first
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contained, altogether, twelve papers on principal issues by five Czech (Havranek, Mathesius, Mukařovský, Trnka, Weingart) and six foreign authors (there were two papers by Trubetzkoy, one each by Brun, Durnovo, Karcevskij, Savickij, and Slotty); the whole of the second volume was devoted to Jakobson’s study on the historical phonology of Russian. These two volumes, written in French and German, were the first independent publications of the Circle. The theses were presented by the latter, collectively in the linguistic and pedagogical sections, while in the literary-historical section Mukařovský’s thesis and contribution for discussion were presented individually.
        Most of the work was devoted to the elaboration of the linguistic theses which give a complete and systematic program of linguistic research with special regard to Slavic languages. They resulted from a collective work, patiently done for months in the meetings of a specially appointed committee, whose members were, mainly, Havranek, Jakobson, Mukařovský and the present author. Another very active participant in the meetings (held at a small cafe in Prague VII) was M. Weingart whose name emerges in the list of those present at the Circle’s meetings for the first time on June 2, 1927. It is a great pity that the collective theses of the Circle have never been printed in the Proceedings of the Congress (which, unfortunately, were never published). The French version of the theses was printed in the first volume of Travaux, pp. 7-29.[6] The atmosphere of the Prague Congress of Slavicists, it should be added, was not favorable to being clearly centered on a definite domain of general problems. Unlike the situation in The Hague, the scientific disciplines represented in the Congress were not tied together by the internal bond of common methods; rather, they constituted a heterogeneous grouping united only by a common subject matter. Besides, reasons of representation and manifestation were to increase the number of the participants more than a really working congress can afford. For all this, the theses of the Circle, especially the linguistic ones, were met with great interest by the (especially the foreign) members of the Congress, and their success was especially manifested by the election, in one of the plenary sessions, of a committee (Belič, Doroszewski, Havránek, Jakobson, Karcevskij, Mathesius, Romanski, Simovyč, Szober, and Trubetzkoy) which was to provide for the analyses of contemporary Slavic languages according to the principles presented in the Circle’s theses.
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        As is well known, the principles of the Neogrammarian school were, in their time, applied most systematically and most successfully in the domain of the phonic level of language. Also, in the activities of the Prague Circle regard to the phonic side of language was to occupy, from the very beginning, a most important place. This is evidenced by the theses presented both at The Hague and in Prague. The functionally and structurally oriented analysis of speech was also to establish our close connections with the tradition of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, vivid in Russia, and partly also in Poland, as well as with modern American linguistics, represented mainly by Edward Sapir. There were, too, some ideas in O. Jespersen’s work which we could develop further; moreover the leading English phonetician, Daniel Jones, was arriving at some conclusions rather closely related to our views. All these facts, and especially the achievements of our Russian colleagues, Trubetzkoy and Jakobson, were to make phonology our main cri de guerre. We felt that in the Second International Congress of Linguists, which was to be held in Geneva at the end of August, 1931, phonology would be the main issue, in regard to which it would be necessary to define our standpoint. We therefore decided to prepare the Geneva debate by organizing, in December 1930, an International Phonological Conference in Prague. We quickly set to work, and our daring undertaking proved more successful than anyone could have expected.
        Our invitation was accepted by fifteen linguists of eight countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Holland, Norway, Poland, Switzerland and Yugoslavia); together with the participants of Czechoslovakia (ten Czechs, three Russians, two Ukrainians, one Serbian and one German) they thrashed out the involved issues with untiring interest for no less than four days (from December 18 to 21). The basis of the discussions was provided by twenty-two papers on main phonological issues. Out of them, seven had been prepared by Czechoslovak scholars, and fifteen by the participants from abroad. The Proceedings of the Conference were published in time for the Geneva Congress as volume IV of the Travaux (containing 326 pp.)> and aroused a vivid interest in international linguistic quarters. The volume contained all papers read at the conference (with one exception), the summaries of the discussions, and the projects of phonological terminology and transcription. In Geneva phonology was really one of the main issues discussed in plenary sessions, but after the Prague conference the cause of
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phonology was virtually won. Trubetzkoy’s paper introducing the discussion met no fundamental opposition and the International Phonological Association, which had been established during the closing session of the Prague Conference, was unanimously declared by the Congress for an organization affiliated to the Permanent International Committee of Linguists. The progress of phonological research is evidenced by a survey of phonological books and papers in our phonological bulletin which we issued twice, in 1932 and 1935, for the International Congresses of Phonetic Sciences in, respectively, Amsterdam and London. The bulletin, however, gives only a classified bibliography without any critical evaluation. Such evaluation would, of course, be very helpful, especially in the present state of phonological research.[7]
        After the Prague Congress of Slavicists we were increasingly conscious of our duty not to neglect, for all our success abroad, propaganda for our ideas at home. We could attempt to do this propagandist work with a good conscience because our approach to language and its functions had never for us been a purely linguistic affair. The activities of Mukařovský and Jakobson fully endorsed my earlier conviction that linguistic theory makes the most natural ally of literary theory, and the consequences implied by our conception of the functions of the standard language impinged ever more intensely on the issues of our cultural life. We approached the broader circles of Czech intellectual workers in May 1930 at a meeting commemorating the eightieth birthday of T. G. Masaryk. The meeting was meant not only as a tribute to the work of a philosopher but also as an act of gratitude to a man who, with his rare understanding of the effort of the younger generation of research workers, supported us with his interest and assistance.
        Two years later, we presented ourselves to the wider public of Czech educated circles in a series of meetings, the purpose of which was not to celebrate but to fight. It is still well remembered what circumstances had led to that series. After the death of Josef Zubatý in March 1931, the chief editorship of the periodical Naše řeč[8] was entrusted to Dr. Jin Haller who, a genuine epigone, conceived his work in a pedantic, puristic spirit. His numerous reproofs called forth a violent reaction from the criticized Czech authors, and the ensuing polemics aroused an unusual wave of interest in the problems of Standard Czech among the educated Czech speakers. We had formed our clear views on those issues
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before. The Prague Linguistic Circle had dealt with the theory of standard language and its culture at an earlier period, in both the collective and individual writings of its members. Already in 1929, the Prague Slavicist Congress had been presented the collective theses of the Circle on the cultivation of the standard language and, in the framework of the chapter on functional languages, the Circle’s theses on the literary language and on the language of poetry. As for individual writings, I could refer to a paper of mine on the issue of correctness of language, which I wrote as early as 1912 in the (now discontinued) periodical Přehled [Survey] and in which I criticized the puristic approach. Other members of the Circle (Havránek, Mukařovský, Trnka) had also discussed, in theoretically oriented papers, the problems of Standard Czech, the criteria of correctness in language and the problems of the language of poetry—their papers were published in Travaux, vols. I and IV, in the Proceedings of the Conference of Teachers of Senior High Schools of 1929, and elsewhere. Thus in the situation that arose in the quarrel of the Czech writers with Dr. Haller we felt fully justified in informing the cultivated circles, in a series of lectures with discussions, about our own views on the function of the standard language and on the cultivation of language.
        The lectures of the series were realized in January and February 1932: in the meeting of January 12 I lectured on the postulate of stability in the standard language; on January 25, B. Havránek discussed the functions of the literary language and its cultivation,[9] and R. .Jakobson spoke about contemporary Czech purism; finally, on February 8, M. Weingart lectured on the cultivation of the phonic aspect of Czech, and J. Mukařovský contrasted standard language with poetic language.[10] The series met with vivid response. The meetings had large attendances and were amply commented upon by the daily press. Our standpoint was encouragingly supported also by private communications, made even by some scholars of the older generation, including some direct pupils of Jan Gebauer.[11] We wanted to have the controversial issues thoroughly cleared by a further discussion and therefore prepared a printed version of all the lectures of the series. The volume containing them was issued in September, 1932, in the series Výhledy [Outlook] by the Melantrich Publishing House in Prague. The printed version was supplemented, apart from the usual alphabetical lists of reference, by an introduction supplying a programmatic framework for the book, and—which should especially be noted—
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by a summary of the principles that, in the Circle’s opinion, should he respected in cultivating language. These theses, comprising more than thirteen pages, had been worked out collectively (this is expressly stated in the Introduction) by the authors of the volume, who bear a joint responsibility for them. Interest in the volume and response to it by the Czech general public was considerable. Had it not been for that volume, the authoritative sources[12] would hardly have liberated the Czech language from many puristic prohibitions and commands, formerly enforced by the Naše řeč (and by the official Pravidla českého pravopisu [Rules of Czech Orthography]). Now the puristic aggressiveness of the Naše řeč had to subside.[13]
        The sympathy with which the Czech intellectuals followed our fight against the dictates of puristic pedantry, and the appeal our volume on Standard Czech proved to have to its readers, constituted a capital which had to be handled economically and efficiently. Consequently, after 1933 our activities were intensely directed towards our active domestic audience. But of course we did not neglect the foreign forum, and continued participating in all international congresses which dealt with linguistic questions. We thus took part in the Third International Congress of Linguists in Rome in 1933, in the Second Congress of Slavicists held in Warsaw in 1934, and especially in both phonetic congresses, the first of which took place in Amsterdam in 1932, and the second in London in 1935. In the Amsterdam Congress our members presented a series of lectures on the study of the phonic aspect of language from the functionalist and structural point-of-view (we also provided a printed version of these lectures, which was published in 1933 as a reprint from Archives Néerlandaises de Phonetique Expérimentale, 8-9, 1933). The London Congress already had its separate phonological section whose program was filled, for the greatest part, by members of the Circle and of the International Phonological Association. It should also be noted that two representatives of ours (A. Isačenko and J. Vachek) were invited in 1934 by the Anthropological Congress held in London to give, in its linguistic section, two informative talks on phonology.
        Our claim that we consistently uphold our traditional contact with foreign scholars is strongly supported by the collective volume of studies in linguistics and theory of literature, which was published this year [1936, J.V.] as volume VI of our Travaux series and is dedicated to the Fourth International Congress of Linguists,
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meeting this year in Copenhagen. At the same time, this very volume gives evidence of how much stronger our native roots have become. The volume contains twenty-four contributions, the highest number ever reached in our collective volumes intended for international circles of linguists, and out of this number nine have Czech authors and one was written by a Slovak. Compared with the five Czech authors in the 1929 volume, and with the four Czechs in 1931, the present figure represents an increase of 100 per cent. The most enjoyable aspect of this increase is that, for the greatest part, it represents the work of our younger generation of scholars. An analogous strengthening of the domestic element in our work may be ascertained from the rich spectrum of the lectures held at the Circle’s meetings within the last few years.
        The increased concentration of the Circle’s activities within the domestic domain is reflected, in the last few years, mainly by its publishing activities. Of great importance here is the outstanding participation of our members in the linguistic part of the encyclopaedic series Československá vlastivěda [The Knowledge of the Country]. We find here the history of Czech verse, both in older (R. Jakobson) and in more modern times (J. Mukařovský), Czech dialectology, and the history of Standard Czech (both by B. Havránek). It is exactly in these studies that the important contribution of the Circle’s principles and methods for the study of Czech is revealed most clearly. The members of the Circle were invited to participate in this work individually; there was, however, also a collective enterprise launched by the Circle in the domestic domain. This was the foundation of the Circle’s own periodical, which was agreed upon by a committee of the Circle and the Melantrich Publishing House in 1934. In this way the Slovo a slovesnost [Word and Poetics] came into existence, expressly denoted in its subtitle as the organ of the Prague Linguistic Circle.[14]
        The first issue was published, after long and careful preparation, in March 1935. The introductory paper, signed by the whole Editorial Board, programmatically enumerated all the tasks the Circle would like to perform in the domestic domain. It is, in a way, a maxima program, and one should not wonder why only a part of it could be realized by now. Still, after the publication of the first six issues of the periodical, one can assert that the new journal has succeeded in finding both its field of problems and its collective body of readers. As its particular assets should be realized the liv-
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ing, working contact between scholars, new literary theorists, and writers, men of literary practice.
        We have come to the end of our survey of the activities of the Prague Linguistic Circle in its first decade. We have traced here the way in which the Circle originated and in which its activities were gradually developing both at home and abroad. We may be fully satisfied with the results of our work in this decade. In foreign linguistics we fought for and won for our group the respectful title of the "Prague School,” while at home nobody can, without ill will, deny us the merit of having given many fresh impulses to Czech linguistic and literary research by our new standpoint and our new methods of work. Also, as an organization of research workers, we have formed a working comunity of a specific type. We formed an association on the basis of a collective effort of research workers and we willingly accepted into our group any qualified worker who agreed with our basic standpoint and was prepared for honest cooperation. We have never been eager to increase our numbers because we have been intent only on the possibility of working jointly, not on the acquiring of positions of power. When in 1930 the Circle was reorganized from a free group into a firmly organized association, the application for the approval of its statutes by the authorities was signed by no more than seventeen members, and even now, at a time when the number of our lectures and discussions is very high, the total of our members, including members from abroad, only slightly exceeds fifty.
        Our working symbiosis with the young Russian scholars is sometimes adduced by those who are not favorably inclined toward us as an argument for the assertion that our own activities are nothing but a Czech application of the teaching of Russian linguistic and literary historical theories. Even if this were true, it would hardly be objectionable because everywhere in the world progress in scientific research consists, for the greatest part, in the development and new application of ideas taken from elsewhere. Czech research work especially has had—apart from rare exceptions—a character of more or less independent marginal notes on the scientific development outlined by workers of pioneer foreign countries. Besides, there might be some merit in introducing Russian influence into the quarters in which an excessive hegemony had belonged to the influence of German research work. But the reality is not so simple by far and the thesis of our opponents alleging
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our passive acceptance of Russian models is not correct. I had sailed against the Neogrammarian tide long before I met the young Russian linguists, and as regards the theory of literature, mere reference to J. Mukařovský’s thesis of 1923[15] will suffice to convince that, here too, the tree of the new conception of research has been deeply rooted in the native soil. Our meeting with the Russians has brought us support and instruction, and it is only honest to say in public, at this opportunity of the tenth anniversary of our Circle, that we are sincerely grateful to them for this. On the other hand, it was not always ourselves who played the part of the pupils. Our symbiosis has developed, in a very pleasant way, the mutual “give and take” which should characterize any and every occasion of scientific cooperation, and especially a genuine cooperation of Slavic research workers. This is due to the positive creative effort which has been typical of the Prague Linguistic Circle from its very beginnings. And positive research work will be our goal also in the years to come. We are certain that the balance of our activities is a good justification of our work and that it will be even better in future.