Yevgeny Polivanov: Beyond Formalism?

Abstract

The article examines the multifaceted activity of Evgeny Polivanov, whose contribution to the formation of new linguistics and the formal method continues to provoke debate. The specificity of Polivanov’s main ideas and principles, in comparison with the mainstream formalists (Shklovsky, Tynianov) consisted in the reliance on the heritage of positivism (Baudouin, historian Kareev), supplemented by a kind of sociological and cultural “relationalism”.