The Prague linguistic circle included the Russian émigrés
Roman Jakobson,
Nikolai Trubetzkoy, and
Sergei Karcevskiy, as well as the famous Czech literary scholars
René Wellek and
Jan Mukařovský. The instigator of the circle, and its first president until his death in 1945, was the
Czech linguist
Vilém Mathesius. In 1929 the Circle promulgated its theses in a paper submitted to the First Congress of
Slavists. "The programmatic 1929 Prague
Theses, surely one of the most imposing linguistic edifices of the 20th century, incapsulated [sic] the functionalist credo." In the late 20th century, English translations of the Circle's seminal works were published by the Czech linguist
Josef Vachek in several collections. Also in 1929, the group launched a journal,
Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague. World War II brought an end to it. The
Travaux was briefly resurrected in 1966–1971. The inaugural issue was devoted to the political science concept of
center and periphery. It was resurrected yet again in 1995. The group's Czech language work is published in
Slovo a slovesnost (Word and Literature). == Members ==