ABSTRACT
Functionalism in linguistics arises from the concerns of Vilém Mathesius (1882-1945), a teacher at the Caroline University in Prague, who, in 1911, published an article, ‘On the potentiality of the phenomena of language’ (English translation in Vachek, 1964), in which he calls for a non-historical approach to the study of language (compare STRUCTURALIST LINGUISTICS). Some of the linguists who shared his concerns, including the Russian, Roman Osipovich Jakobson (1896-1982), and who became known as the Prague School linguists, met in Prague for regular discussions between 1926 and 1945, but the Prague School also included linguists not based in Czechoslovakia (Sampson, 1980, p. 103), such as the Russian, Nikolaj Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy (18901938) (see FUNCTIONAL PHONOLOGY). More recently, functionalism has come to be associated with the British linguist Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (b. 1925) and his followers.
