The Notion of the Sound Law and Its Criticizers

This article deals with the problematic nature of the concept of sound law in linguistics, where the authors attempt to comprehend the reasons for the sharp criticism of this concept in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, by relying on the modern understanding of science on the whole and the status of scientific law in particular. The paper gives a brief historical reference to the formation of the concept of scientific law, which was a prerequisite for the emergence of the sound law in linguistics. It gives the postulates by Osthoff (1878) and K. Bruggmann who swore allegiance to the sound law and represents their sharp criticism by such linguists as H. (Baudouin, 1968; Saussure, 1977). Investigating the works by the critics of Neogrammarian concept, the authors attempt to determine the causes of the problematic nature of this concept, which later would help determine the modern status of the scientific law in linguistics, and accordingly, the possibility of the existence of sound laws.