In Loving Memory of Our Teacher
Ostapovych O.Ya.
Yaroslav Baran: our teacher and an outstanding person
Professor Yaroslav Baran was a fundamental researcher in general and German phraseology, one of the leading names in the national linguistics school. His creative output, though not immense in volume or number of printed papers, consists of works of extraordinarily high quality, scientific novelty, and correctness in argumentation, offering bold and unconventional views on problems. Therefore, both of Yaroslav Andriyovych’s monographs are among the most cited works in the field of German studies, maintaining a consistently high citation index. Yaroslav Andriyovych never chased after superficial signs of scientific success, such as accumulating a large number of publications or quantitative metrics, nor did he publish material that would go unread. He strictly adhered to the philosopher L. Wittgenstein’s commandment: “If you have nothing to say, better remain silent.” This adherence inevitably provoked envy and opposition from those in academic positions who built rapid careers by compiling others’ work, rearranging paragraphs of their early “creations,” publishing as many as ten “monographs” a year, or acting on the principle that “subordinates write, and superiors sign.” Undoubtedly, these individuals knew the true value of their scientific output compared to Yaroslav Andriyovych’s.
It is known that, by K. Popper’s criterion of falsifiability, a text only truly belongs to scientific discourse if it provokes attempts to refute it. In this sense, Yaroslav Baran’s works were genuinely scientific texts: they sparked discussions, disputes, disagreements, and a desire to oppose. This was combined with simplicity and accessibility in presenting complex philosophical problems of general linguistics.
In his early works, Yaroslav Andriyovych convincingly substantiates the idea of the phraseological nature of authorial occasionalisms, even in the absence of lexicographical codification, arguing (a position that has since become classic) that they possess significantly more important features of phraseologisms: idiomaticity, stability, reproducibility, and expressiveness. In his first monograph, “Main Issues of General and German Phraseology,” the scholar summarizes the theoretical achievements of phraseological science over the first 40 years of its independent development, only “approaching” the main problem of his scientific work—the systemic, level-based, sign-based, nominative-predicative status of phraseologisms, and the relationships of polysemy, homonymy, synonymy, and antonymy. The culmination of Yaroslav Baran’s many years of research in this field was his second monograph and doctoral dissertation “Phraseology in the Language System,” where his innovative idea is formulated clearly and argued persuasively.
Science begins where not only the established stereotypical ideas about a certain problem are destroyed (which are often the result of repetitive, thoughtless quoting, compiling, and “migrating” from work to work). Far more challenging is the destruction of theoretical concepts that have gained the status of axioms through the scientific authority of their authors. Debating such concepts is often considered unnecessary, if not a sign of poor taste. Among such entrenched theories was the idea of the existence of a phraseological system (or micro-system) of each individual language, a separate phraseological level, as well as the mechanical division of phraseologisms into nominative and predicative based on purely formal, structural-syntactic features (phrases/sentences). These notions had somewhat dogmatized over time, sacralized by the names of such fundamental phraseologists as V. Arkhangelsky, V. Telia, O. Kunin, O. Amosova, I. Chernyshova, and O. Reichstein. It required considerable scientific courage to challenge such authorities.
It was a deep analysis of the nature of the phraseologism, as a complex linguistic sign of a special type, that allowed the scholar to refute the proposition of the predicative nature of sentence-phraseologisms substantiating their nominative character. Despite the complex-situational denotation of stable reproducible phrases, the author concluded that the semantics of a phraseologism is isomorphic to the semantics of a word, more precisely, its conceptual signifier. By originally applying semiotic tools combined with the theory of semantic and informational fields, Yaroslav Baran reached a paradoxical but very logical conclusion. Systemic language units are not those that form a certain established structure linked by paradigmatic-hierarchical, linear-syntagmatic relations. Indeed, the existence of phraseological word-formation nests, polysemantic expressions, antonymy, synonymous rows, and stylistic registers in phraseology is hard to deny. However, linguistic units become systemic only when they cover a certain informational field “without residue.” Phraseologisms, evidently, do not meet this criterion. Similarly, one can speak of a separate level of language units not when they occupy an intermediate place in the vertical hierarchy purely structurally. With phraseologisms, it is even more challenging—they seem to be on a level higher than phonemes, morphemes, and lexemes, somewhere between the latter and syntactic and textual units. However, a phraseologism, on the one hand, is semantically isomorphic to a word, and on the other hand, can have the syntactic structure of a sentence, or even represent, in terminology as O.V. Kunin termed it, a “microtext.” Yaroslav Baran’s original viewpoint posits that a distinct level in language is constituted only by those units that, when combined with units of their “own” horizontal line, are recoded into higher-order units. Thus, phonemes form morphemes, morphemes are recoded into lexemes, lexemes into phrases, phrases into sentences, and sentences into texts. However, it is impossible to compose a meaningful textual message, or even a complete sentence, consisting solely of phraseologisms. Exceptions are possible only as artificial constructs to achieve a hyperbolized humorous effect. And although individual utterances can consist of idiomatic sentences, traditionally called “predicative phraseologisms,” nominal sentences consisting of a single word are rather exceptions that confirm the rule.
Thus, Yaroslav Baran’s linguistic concept, which we could tentatively call “semiotic-field,” made a new contribution to the development of the theory of phraseology as a special linguistic sign. In the lexical system, it occupies a place at the level of lexemes, isomorphic to the word in its semantics, covering only part of the informational field (predominantly expressive, sometimes even pejorative) and does not recode into higher-order units without the help of other lexemes. These ideas, we believe, will retain their significant scientific value for a long time.
The author of these lines had the happiness of closely communicating with Professor Baran for two decades. It was a privilege to take the first independent steps in science under his fatherly guidance as a teacher and a mentor. Yaroslav Andriyovych did not allow himself and did not tolerate in others pseudo-scientific verbosity or opportunistic “water,” which can so easily lead one astray in the humanities, especially for a beginner. Therefore, his advice on not “drowning” in the literature, separating the wheat from the chaff, formulating one’s own idea to avoid repeating others’ or common knowledge, not casting a “fog” of scientific-sounding terms while not falling into journalism, were invaluable. I still remember the first, youthful attempt at publication, the draft of which, meticulously read by Yaroslav Andriyovych, was completely marked in red with his corrections. Spending his precious time to rework a somewhat naive text five times with his student and only then finally considering it “something like science”—that was him. And all this without a hint of condescension or disdain for the beginner and the intellectual chasm separating him from the professor. Yaroslav Andriyovych used to say about himself: “I have some relation to science.” Was it coquettishness or posturing? Not at all! No one ever heard Yaroslav Baran utter the phrase “I am a scientist,” and in general, the first-person singular pronoun to denote his own scientific merits was not among his favorite expressive means. What a contrast to the pseudo-elite scientists who from the first seconds of conversation begin to instill in the interlocutor (or rather, themselves, for you cannot hide the inferiority complex like a needle in a haystack) the fixed idea: “I am something outstanding, and you are a complete nobody.” With Yaroslav Andriyovych, it was different. At any time of the day, you could drop by his home (and almost certainly find him at his desk) to borrow some urgently needed rare scientific book, which, coincidentally, would be found in his vast home library. And if Baran didn’t have it, probably no one else in the city did. As it is known, in education, there is no more effective tool than personal example. In this sense, Yaroslav Andriyovych was a clear example for all of us of how not to engage in science but live in it. Seeking the truth, painfully giving birth to ideas, creating, being responsible for every written word, spending 19 (!) years breaking through bureaucratic barriers, and still defending a doctoral dissertation (at 67 years old, it’s certainly not for career reasons but for the love of truth), and passing away while giving a lecture with a book in his hands. God grant that in our cynical times, when purchasing academic degrees has become an everyday reality and blatant ignoramuses flaunt them, there will still be those “madmen” who will follow the thorny and noble path of Yaroslav Baran.