1. Ferdinand De Saussure Pdf
2. General Linguistics Saussure Pdf

Ferdinand de Saussure, in the Course in General Linguistics, describes language as a system of signs (a word is a sign) to which we respond in a predictable way. According to. Course in general linguistics Item Preview remove-circle. By Saussure, Ferdinand de, 1857-1913. Publication date 1959. Topics Language and languages, Comparative linguistics. Publisher New York: Philosophical Library. PDF download. Download 1 file. 68 COURSE IN GENERAL LINGUISTICS that it could be represented equally by just any other sequence is proved by differences among languages and by the very existence of different languages: the signified 'ox' has as its signifier b-o-j on one side of the border and o-k-s (Ochs) on the other. Download Beach Head Desert War Full Version sabah paysage parti galactic. Course in General Linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure Edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye In collaboration with Albert Riedlinger Translated, with an introduction. Indicates that the course will be about language in general: not this or that particular language (Chinese or French) and not this or that aspect (phonetics or semantics). A general linguistics would be impossible by empirical means because there exist innumerable objects that can be considered linguistic. Instead Saussure’s methodology allows him to establish a coherent object for linguistics in the distinction.

Ferdinand de Saussure (/soʊˈsjʊər/;^[3]French: [fɛʁdinɑ̃ də sosyʁ]; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swisslinguist and semiotician. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiology in the 20th century.^[4][5] He is widely considered one of the founders of 20th-century linguistics^[6][7][8][9] and one of two major founders (together with Charles Sanders Peirce) of semiotics/semiology.^[10]

One of his translators, Roy Harris, summarized Saussure's contribution to linguistics and the study of 'the whole range of human sciences. It is particularly marked in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology.'^[11] Although they have undergone extension and critique over time, the dimensions of organization introduced by Saussure continue to inform contemporary approaches to the phenomenon of language. Prague school linguist Jan Mukařovský writes that Saussure's 'discovery of the internal structure of the linguistic sign differentiated the sign both from mere acoustic 'things'.. and from mental processes', and that in this development 'new roads were thereby opened not only for linguistics, but also, in the future, for the theory of literature'.^[12]Ruqaiya Hasan argued that 'the impact of Saussure’s theory of the linguistic sign has been such that modern linguists and their theories have since been positioned by reference to him: they are known as pre-Saussurean, Saussurean, anti-Saussurean, post-Saussurean, or non-Saussure'.^[13]

• 2Work and influence

Biography[edit]

Saussure was born in Geneva in 1857. His father was Henri Louis Frédéric de Saussure, a mineralogist, entomologist, and taxonomist. Saussure showed signs of considerable talent and intellectual ability as early as the age of fourteen.^[14] In the autumn of 1870, he began attending the Institution Martine (previously the Institution Lecoultre until 1969), in Geneva. There he lived with the family of a classmate, Elie David.^[15] Graduating at the top of class, Saussure expected to continue his studies at the Gymnase de Genève, but his father decided he was not mature enough at fourteen and a half, and sent him to the Collège de Genève instead. Saussure was not pleased, as he complained: 'I entered the Collège de Genève, to waste a year there as completely as a year can be wasted.'^[16]

After a year of studying Latin, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit and taking a variety of courses at the University of Geneva, he commenced graduate work at the University of Leipzig in 1876.

Two years later, at 21, Saussure published a book entitled Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (Dissertation on the Primitive Vowel System in Indo-European Languages). After this he studied for a year at the University of Berlin under the PrivatdozentenHeinrich Zimmer, with whom he studied Celtic, and Hermann Oldenberg with whom he continued his studies of Sanskrit.^[17] He returned to Leipzig to defend his doctoral dissertation De l'emploi du génitif absolu en Sanscrit, and was awarded his doctorate in February 1880. Soon, he relocated to the University of Paris, where he lectured on Sanskrit, Gothic and Old High German and occasionally other subjects.

Ferdinand de Saussure is one of the world's most quoted linguists, which is remarkable as he himself hardly published anything during his lifetime. Even his few scientific articles are not unproblematic. Thus, for example, his publication on Lithuanian phonetics^[18] is grosso modo taken from studies by the Lithuanian researcher Friedrich Kurschat, with whom Saussure traveled through Lithuania in August 1880 for two weeks, and whose (German) books Saussure had read.^[19] Saussure, who had studied some basic grammar of Lithuanian in Leipzig for one semester but was unable to speak the language, was thus dependent on Kurschat. It is also questionable to what extent the Cours itself can be traced back to Saussure (alone). Studies have shown that at least the current version and its content are more likely to have the so-called editors Charles Bally and Albert Sèchehaye as their source than Saussure himself.^[20]

Saussure taught at the École pratique des hautes études for eleven years during which he was named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honor).^[21] When offered a professorship in Geneva in 1892, he returned to Switzerland. Saussure lectured on Sanskrit and Indo-European at the University of Geneva for the remainder of his life. It was not until 1907 that Saussure began teaching the Course of General Linguistics, which he would offer three times, ending in the summer of 1911. He died in 1913 in Vufflens-le-Château, Vaud, Switzerland. His brothers were the linguist and Esperantist René de Saussure, and scholar of ancient Chinese astronomy, Léopold de Saussure. In turn, his son was the psychoanalyst Raymond de Saussure.

Saussure attempted, at various times in the 1880s and 1890s, to write a book on general linguistic matters. His lectures about important principles of language description in Geneva between 1907 and 1911 were collected and published by his pupils posthumously in the famous Cours de linguistique générale in 1916. Some of his manuscripts, including an unfinished essay discovered in 1996, were published in Writings in General Linguistics, but most of the material in it had already been published in Engler's critical edition of the Course, in 1967 and 1974. (TUFA)

Work and influence[edit]

Saussure's theoretical reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language vocalic system and particularly his theory of laryngeals, otherwise unattested at the time, bore fruit and found confirmation after the decipherment of Hittite in the work of later generations of linguists such as Émile Benveniste and Walter Couvreur, who both drew direct inspiration from their reading of the 1878 Mémoire.^[22]

Saussure had a major impact on the development of linguistic theory in the first half of the 20th century. His two currents of thought emerged independently of each other, one in Europe, the other in America. The results of each incorporated the basic notions of Saussure's thought in forming the central tenets of structural linguistics. According to him, linguistic entities are parts of a system and are defined by their relations to one another within said system.^[23] The thinker used the game of chess for his analogy, citing that the game is not defined by the physical attributes of the chess pieces but the relation of each piece to the other pieces.^[23]

Saussure's status in contemporary theoretical linguistics, however, is much diminished, with many key positions now dated or subject to challenge, but post-structuralist 21st-century reception remains more open to Saussure's influence.^[24] His main contribution to structuralism was his theory of a two-tiered reality about language. The first is the langue, the abstract and invisible layer, while the second, the parole, refers to the actual speech that we hear in real life.^[25] This framework was later adopted by Claude Levi-Strauss, who used the two-tiered model to determine the reality of myths. His idea was that all myths have an underlying pattern, which form the structure that makes them myths.^[25] These established the structuralist framework to literary criticism.

In Europe, the most important work in that period of influence was done by the Prague school. Most notably, Nikolay Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson headed the efforts of the Prague School in setting the course of phonological theory in the decades from 1940. Jakobson's universalizing structural-functional theory of phonology, based on a markedness hierarchy of distinctive features, was the first successful solution of a plane of linguistic analysis according to the Saussurean hypotheses. Elsewhere, Louis Hjelmslev and the Copenhagen School proposed new interpretations of linguistics from structuralist theoretical frameworks.

In America, Saussure's ideas informed the distributionalism of Leonard Bloomfield^[26] and the post-Bloomfieldian structuralism of such scholars as Eugene Nida, Bernard Bloch, George L. Trager, Rulon S. Wells III, Charles Hockett and, through Zellig Harris, the young Noam Chomsky. In addition to Chomsky's theory of transformational grammar, other contemporary developments of structuralism included Kenneth Pike's theory of tagmemics, Sidney Lamb's theory of stratificational grammar, and Michael Silverstein's work. Systemic functional linguistics is a theory considered to be based firmly on the Saussurean principles of the sign, albeit with some modifications. Ruqaiya Hasan describes systemic functional linguistics as a 'post-Saussurean' linguistic theory.^[13]Michael Halliday argues:

Saussure took the sign as the organizing concept for linguistic structure, using it to express the conventional nature of language in the phrase 'l'arbitraire du signe'. This has the effect of highlighting what is, in fact, the one point of arbitrariness in the system, namely the phonological shape of words, and hence allows the non-arbitrariness of the rest to emerge with greater clarity. An example of something that is distinctly non-arbitrary is the way different kinds of meaning in language are expressed by different kinds of grammatical structure, as appears when linguistic structure is interpreted in functional terms ^[27]

Course in General Linguistics[edit]

Saussure's most influential work, Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique générale), was published posthumously in 1916 by former students Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, on the basis of notes taken from Saussure's lectures in Geneva.^[28] The Course became one of the seminal linguistics works of the 20th century not primarily for the content (many of the ideas had been anticipated in the works of other 20th century linguists) but for the innovative approach that Saussure applied in discussing linguistic phenomena.

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Its central notion is that language may be analyzed as a formal system of differential elements, apart from the messy dialectics of real-time production and comprehension. Examples of these elements include his notion of the linguistic sign, which is composed of the signifier and the signified. Though the sign may also have a referent, Saussure took that to lie beyond the linguist's purview.

Throughout the book, he stated that a linguist can develop a diachronic analysis of a text or theory of language but must learn just as much or more about the language/text as it exists at any moment in time (i.e. 'synchronically'): 'Language is a system of signs that expresses ideas'. A science that studies the life of signs within society and is a part of social and general psychology. Saussure believed that semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign, he called it semiology.

Laryngeal theory[edit]

While a student, Saussure published an important work in Indo-Europeanphilology that proposed the existence of ghosts in Proto-Indo-European called sonant coefficients. The Scandinavian scholar Hermann Möller suggested that they might actually be laryngeal consonants, leading to what is now known as the laryngeal theory. It has been argued that the problem that Saussure encountered, trying to explain how he was able to make systematic and predictive hypotheses from known linguistic data to unknown linguistic data, stimulated his development of structuralism. His predictions about the existence of primate coefficients/laryngeals and their evolution proved a success when Hittite texts were discovered and deciphered, some 50 years later.

Later critics[edit]

The closing sentence of Saussure's Course in General Linguistics has been challenged in many^{[weasel words]} academic disciplines and subdisciplines with its contention that 'linguistics has as its unique and true object the language envisioned in itself and for itself'.^[29] By the latter half of the 20th century, many of Saussure's ideas were under heavy criticism.

Saussure's linguistic ideas are still considered important for their time but have since suffered considerably under rhetorical developments aimed at showing how linguistics had changed or was changing with the times. As a consequence, Saussure's ideas are now often presented by professional linguists as outdated and as superseded by developments such as cognitive linguistics and generative grammar or have been so modified in their basic tenets as to make their use in their original formulations difficult without risking distortion, as in systemic linguistics. That development is occasionally overstated, however; Jan Koster states, 'Saussure, considered the most important linguist of the century in Europe until the 1950s, hardly plays a role in current theoretical thinking about language,'^[30] Over-reactions can also be seen in comments of the cognitive linguist Mark Turner^[31] who reports that many of Saussure's concepts were 'wrong on a grand scale'. It is necessary to be rather more finely nuanced in the positions attributed to Saussure and in their longterm influence on the development of linguistic theorizing in all schools; for a more recent rereading of Saussure with respect to such issues, see Paul Thibault.^[32] Just as many principles of structural linguistics are still pursued, modified and adapted in current practice and according to what has been learnt since about the embodied functioning of brain and the role of language within this, basic tenets begun with Saussure still can be found operating behind the scenes today.^{[citation needed]}

Semiology[edit]

Saussure is one of the founding fathers of semiotics. His term for the field was 'semiology.' Instead of focusing his theory on the origins of language and its historical aspects, Saussure concentrated on the patterns and functions of language itself. He believed that the relationship that exists between the signifier and the signified is purely arbitrary and analytical. His 'sign/signifier/signified/referent' scheme forms the core of the field. Equally crucial but often overlooked or misapplied is the dimension of the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of linguistic description.

Some linguists have pointed out to the fact that Saussure did not 'invent' semiotics but built upon Neoplatonist/Augustinian knowledge from the Middle Ages, particularly in regard to the writings of Augustine of Hippo: 'as for the constitution of Saussurian semiotic theory, the importance of the Augustinian thought contribution (correlated to the Stoic one) has also been recognized. Saussure did not do anything but reform an ancient theory in Europe, according to the modern conceptual exigencies'.^[33]

Influence outside linguistics[edit]

The principles and methods employed by structuralism were later adapted in diverse fields by French intellectuals such as Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Such scholars took influence from Saussure's ideas in their own areas of study (literary studies/philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, respectively).

Works[edit]

• (1878) Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (Memoir on the Primitive System of Vowels in Indo-European Languages), Leipzig: Teubner. (online version in Gallica Program, Bibliothèque nationale de France).
• (1881) De l'emploi du génitif absolu en Sanscrit: Thèse pour le doctorat présentée à la Faculté de Philosophie de l'Université de Leipzig, (On the Use of the Genitive Absolute in Sanskrit: Doctoral dissertation presented to the Faculty of Philosophy of the Leipzig University) Geneva: Jules-Guillamaume Fick. (online version on the Internet Archive).
• (1916) Cours de linguistique générale, ed. C. Bally and A. Sechehaye, with the collaboration of A. Riedlinger, Lausanne and Paris: Payot; trans. W. Baskin, Course in General Linguistics, Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1977.
• (1922) Recueil des publications scientifiques de F. de Saussure, ed. C. Bally and L. Gautier, Lausanne and Geneva: Payot.
• (1993) Saussure’s Third Course of Lectures in General Linguistics (1910–1911): Emile Constantin ders notlarından, Language and Communication series, volume. 12, trans. and ed. E. Komatsu and R. Harris, Oxford: Pergamon.
• (2002) Écrits de linguistique générale, ISBN978-2-07-076116-6.
  • This volume, which consists mostly of material previously published by Engler, includes an attempt at reconstructing a text from a set of Saussure's manuscript pages headed 'The Double Essence of Language', found in 1996 in Geneva. These pages contain ideas already familiar to Saussure scholars, both from Engler's critical edition of the Course and from another unfinished book manuscript of Saussure's, published in 1995 by Maria Pia Marchese (Phonétique: Il manoscritto di Harvard Houghton Library bMS Fr 266 (8), Padova: Unipress, 1995).

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^David Kreps, Bergson, Complexity and Creative Emergence, Springer, 2015, p. 92.
2. ^Mark Aronoff, Janie Rees-Miller (eds.), The Handbook of Linguistics, John Wiley & Sons, 2008, p. 96. However, E. F. K. Koerner maintains that Saussure was not influenced by Durkheim (Ferdinand de Saussure: Origin and Development of His Linguistic Thought in Western Studies of Language. A contribution to the history and theory of linguistics, Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn [Oxford & Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon Press], 1973, pp. 45–61.)
3. ^'Saussure, Ferdinand de'. Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press.
4. ^Robins, R. H. 1979. A Short History of Linguistics, 2nd Edition. Longman Linguistics Library. London and New York. p. 201: Robins writes Saussure's statement of 'the structural approach to language underlies virtually the whole of modern linguistics'.
5. ^Harris, R. and T. J. Taylor. 1989. Landmarks in Linguistic Thought: The Western Tradition from Socrates to Saussure. 2nd Edition. Chapter 16.
6. ^Justin Wintle, Makers of modern culture, Routledge, 2002, p. 467.
7. ^David Lodge, Nigel Wood, Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, Pearson Education, 2008, p. 42.
8. ^Thomas, Margaret. 2011. Fifty Key Thinkers on Language and Linguistics. Routledge: London and New York. p. 145 ff.
9. ^Chapman, S. and C. Routledge. 2005. Key Thinkers in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language. Edinburgh University Press. p.241 ff.
10. ^Winfried Nöth, Handbook of Semiotics, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1990.
11. ^Harris, R. 1988. Language, Saussure and Wittgenstein. Routledge. pix.
12. ^Mukarovsky, J. 1977. On Poetic Language. The Word and Verbal Art: Selected Essays by Jan Mukarovsky. Translated and edited by J. Burbank and Peter Steiner. p. 18.
13. ^ ^abLinguistic sign and the science of linguistics: the foundations of appliability. In Fang Yan & Jonathan Webster (eds.)Developing Systemic Functional Linguistics. Equinox 2013
14. ^Слюсарева, Наталья Александровна: Некоторые полузабытые страницы из истории языкознания – Ф. де Соссюр и У. Уитней. (Общее и романское языкознание: К 60-летию Р.А. Будагова). Москва 1972.
15. ^Joseph, John E. (2012-03-22). Saussure. OUP Oxford. ISBN9780199695652.
16. ^Joseph, John E. (2012-03-22). Saussure. OUP Oxford. ISBN9780191636974.
17. ^Joseph (2012:253)
18. ^Ferdinand de Saussure, « Aaccentuation lituanienne ». In : Indogermanische Forschungen. Vol. 6, 157 – 166
19. ^(Citation issue note: Although the following three citations appear to be parts of or volumes of the same book, or somehow related, the first part/book cited is linked to the URL that was provided in the citation; the second two parts/books cited do not appear to be contained in the material linked to the URL. Whether and which parts match the cited material is unclear.)
    1.Kurschat, Friedrich (1843). Beiträge zur Kunde der littauischen Sprache. Beilage zum Ruhig-Mielckeschen Wörterbuch. (Contributions as the client of the Lithuanian language. Supplement to the Ruhig-Mielcke dictionary. Königsberg: Hartungschen Hofbuchdruckerei.
    2. Kurschat, Friedrich (1843). Beiträge zur Kunde der littauischen Sprache. Erstes Heft: Deutsch-littauische Phraseologie der Präpositionen. (Contributions as the client of the Lithuanian language. Part I: German-Lithuanian Phraseology of Prepositions). Königsberg: Hartungschen Hofbuchdruckerei.
    3. Kurschat, Friedrich (1849). Beiträge zur Kunde der littauischen Sprache. Zweites Heft: Laut- und Tonlehre der littauischen Sprache (Contributions as the client of the Lithuanian language. Part II: Sound and sound theory of the Lithuanian language). Königsberg: Hartungschen Hofbuchdruckerei.
20. ^Jürgen Trabant, « Saussure contre le Cours ». In: Francois Rastier (Hrsg.): De l'essence double du langage et le renouveau du saussurisme. Limoges: Lambert-Lucas. ISBN978-2-35935-160-6
21. ^Culler, p. 23
22. ^E. F. K. Koerner, 'The Place of Saussure's Memoire in the development of historical linguistics,' in Jacek Fisiak (ed.) Papers from the Sixth International Conference on Historical Linguistics,(Poznań, Poland, 1983) John Benjamins Publishing, 1985 pp.323-346, p.339.
23. ^ ^abAronoff, Mark; Rees-Miller, Janie (2017). The Handbook of Linguistics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. p. 108. ISBN9781405186766.
24. ^Boris Gasparov. Beyond Pure Reason, pp1-8, 2010.
25. ^ ^abFendler, Lynn (2010). Michel Foucault. London: Bloomsbury. p. 17. ISBN9781472518811.
26. ^John Earl Joseph (2002). From Whitney to Chomsky: Essays in the History OfAmerican Linguisitcs. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 139. ISBN978-90-272-4592-2.
27. ^Halliday, MAK. 1977. Ideas about Language. Reprinted in Volume 3 of MAK Halliday's Collected Works. Edited by J.J. Webster. London: Continuum. p113.
28. ^Macey, D. (2009). The Penguin dictionary of critical theory. Crane Library at the University of British Columbia.
29. ^Boris Gasparov. Beyond Pure Reason, pp59-60, 2010.
30. ^Koster, Jan. 1996. 'Saussure meets the brain', in R. Jonkers, E. Kaan, J. K. Wiegel, eds., Language and Cognition 5. Yearbook 1992 of the Research Group for Linguistic Theory and Knowledge Representation of the University of Groningen, Groningen, pp. 115–120.PDF
31. ^Turner, Mark. 1987. Death is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor, Criticism. University of Chicago Press, p. 6.
32. ^Thibault, Paul. 1996. Re-reading Saussure: The Dynamics of Signs in Social Life. London: Routledge.
33. ^Munteanu, E. 'On the Object-Language/Metalanguage Distinction in Saint Augustine's Works: De Dialectica and de Magistro', p. 65. In: Cram, D., Linn, A. R., & Nowak, E. (eds.). History of Linguistics 1996: Volume 2: From Classical to Contemporary Linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Retrieved April 16, 2015 from https://books.google.com/books?id=IWtCAAAAQBAJ&pg.

Sources[edit]

• Culler, J. (1976). Saussure. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins.
• Ducrot, O. and Todorov, T. (1981). Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Sciences of Language, trans. C. Porter. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Harris, R. (1987). Reading Saussure. London: Duckworth.
• Holdcroft, D. (1991). Saussure: Signs, System, and Arbitrariness. Cambridge University Press.
• Веселинов, Д. (2008). Българските студенти на Фердинанд дьо Сосюр (The bulgarian students of Ferdinand de Saussure). Университетско издателство 'Св. Климент Охридски' (Sofia University Press).
• Joseph, J. E. (2012). Saussure. Oxford University Press.
• Sanders, Carol (2004). The Cambridge Companion to Saussure. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-521-80486-8.
• Wittmann, Henri (1974). 'New tools for the study of Saussure's contribution to linguistic thought.' Historiographia Linguistica 1.255-64. [1]

External links[edit]

• Publications by and about Ferdinand de Saussure in the catalogue Helveticat of the Swiss National Library
• Works by or about Ferdinand de Saussure in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• The poet who could smell vowels: an article in The Times Literary Supplement by John E. Joseph, November 14, 2007.
• Original texts and resources, published by Texto, ISSN1773-0120(in French).
• Hearing Heidegger and Saussure by Elmer G. Wiens.

Course in General Linguistics (French: Cours de linguistique générale) is a book compiled by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from notes on lectures given by Ferdinand de Saussure at the University of Geneva between 1906 and 1911. It was published in 1916, after Saussure's death, and is generally regarded as the starting point of structural linguistics, an approach to linguistics that flourished in Europe and the United States in the first half of the 20th century. One of Saussure's translators, Roy Harris, summarized Saussure's contribution to linguistics and the study of language in the following way:

Language is no longer regarded as peripheral to our grasp of the world we live in, but as central to it. Words are not mere vocal labels or communicational adjuncts superimposed upon an already given order of things. They are collective products of social interaction, essential instruments through which human beings constitute and articulate their world. This typically twentieth-century view of language has profoundly influenced developments throughout the whole range of human sciences. It is particularly marked in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology'.^[1]

Although Saussure was specifically interested in historical linguistics, the Course develops a theory of semiotics that is more generally applicable. A manuscript containing Saussure's original notes was found in 1996, and later published as Writings in General Linguistics.

Semiology: langue, langage, and parole[edit]

Saussure distinguishes between 'language (langue)' and 'speech (langage)'. Language is a well-defined homogeneous object in the heterogeneous mass of speech facts. Speech is many-sided and heterogeneous: it belongs both to the individual and to society. Language is a self-contained whole and a principle of classification: it is social. Language is not complete in any speaker: it is a product that is assimilated by speakers. It exists only within a collective. Language is 'a system of signs that express ideas'.

To explain how the social crystallization of language comes about, Saussure proposes the notion of 'individual speaking (parole)'. Speaking is willful and intentional.

While individual speaking is heterogeneous, that is to say composed of unrelated or differing parts or elements, language is homogeneous—a system of signs composed of the union of meanings and 'sound images', in which both parts are psychological. Therefore, as speech (langue) is systematic, it is this that Saussure focuses on since it allows an investigative methodology that is 'scientific' in the sense of systematic enquiry.

Beginning with the Greek word semîon meaning 'sign', Saussure proposes a new science of 'semiology': 'a science that studies the life of signs within society'.

The sign[edit]

The focus of Saussure's investigation is the linguistic unit or sign.

The sign (signe) is described as a 'double entity', made up of the signifier, or sound pattern (referred to by Saussure as a 'signal'), and the signified, or concept (referred to by Saussure as 'signification'). The sound pattern is a psychological, not a material concept, belonging to the system. Both components of the linguistic sign are inseparable. One way to appreciate this is to think of them as being like either side of a piece of paper – one side simply cannot exist without the other.

The relationship between signifier and signified is, however, not quite that simple. Saussure is adamant that language cannot be considered a collection of names for a collection of objects (as it is in the conception that Adam named the animals, for example). According to Saussure, language is not a nomenclature. Indeed, the basic insight of Saussure's thought is that denotation, the reference to objects in some universe of discourse, is mediated by system-internal relations of difference.

Arbitrariness[edit]

For Saussure, there is no essential or natural reason why a particular signifier should be attached to a particular signified. Saussure calls this the 'arbitrariness of the sign' (l'arbitraire du signe).

No two people have precisely the same concept of 'tree,' since no two people have precisely the same experiences or psychology. We can communicate 'tree,' however, for the same reason we can communicate at all: because we have agreed to use it in a consistent way. If we agreed to use the word and sound for 'horse' instead, it would be called 'horse' to the same effect. Since all that is important is agreement and consistency, the connection is arbitrary.

In further support of the arbitrary nature of the sign, Saussure goes on to argue that if words stood for pre-existing universal concepts they would have exact equivalents in meaning from one language to the next and this is not so. Languages reflect shared experience in complicated ways and can paint very different pictures of the world from one another. To explain this, Saussure uses the word bœuf as an example. In English, he says, we have different words for the animal and the meat product: Ox and beef. In French, bœuf is used to refer to both concepts. In Saussure's view, particular words are born out of a particular society's needs, rather than out of a need to label a pre-existing set of concepts.But the picture is actually even more complicated, through the integral notion of 'relative motivation'. Relative motivation refers to the compositionality of the linguistic system, along the lines of an immediate constituent analysis. This is to say that, at the level of langue, hierarchically nested signifiers have relatively determined signified. An obvious example is in the English number system: That is, though twenty and two might be arbitrary representations of a numerical concept, twenty-two, twenty-three etc. are constrained by those more arbitrary meanings. The tense of verbs provides another obvious example: The meaning of 'kicked' is relatively motivated by the meanings of 'kick-' and '-ed'. But, most simply, this captures the insight that the value of a syntagm—a system-level sentence—is a function of the value of the signs occurring in it. It is for this reason that Leonard Bloomfield called the lexicon the set of fundamental irregularities of the language. (Note how much of the 'meaningfulness' of the Jabberwocky poem is due to these sorts of compositional relationships!)

A further issue is onomatopoeia. Saussure recognised that his opponents could argue that with onomatopoeia there is a direct link between word and meaning, signifier and signified. However, Saussure argues that, on closer etymological investigation, onomatopoeic words can, in fact, be unmotivated (not sharing a likeness), in part evolving from non-onomatopoeic origins. The example he uses is the French and English onomatopoeic words for a dog's bark, that is ouaoua and Bow Wow.

Finally, Saussure considers interjections and dismisses this obstacle with much the same argument, i.e., the sign/signifier link is less natural than it initially appears. He invites readers to note the contrast in pain interjection in French (aie) and English (ouch).

Value[edit]

The value of a sign is determined by all the other signs in the langue.

Saussure realized that if linguistics was going to be an actual science, language could not be a mere nomenclature; for otherwise it would be little more than a fashionable version of lexicology, constructing lists of the definitions of words. Thus he argued that the sign is ultimately determined by the other signs in the system, which delimit its meaning and possible range of use, rather than its internal sound-pattern and concept. Sheep, for example, has the same meaning as the French word mouton, but not the same value, for mouton can also be used to mean the meal lamb, whereas sheep cannot, because it has been delimited by mutton.

Language is therefore a system of interdependent entities. But not only does it delimit a sign's range of use, for which it is necessary, because an isolated sign could be used for absolutely anything or nothing without first being distinguished from another sign, but it is also what makes meaning possible. The set of synonyms redouter ('to dread'), craindre ('to fear'), and avoir peur ('to be afraid'), for instance, have their particular meaning so long as they exist in contrast to one another. But if two of the terms disappeared, then the remaining sign would take on their roles, become vaguer, less articulate, and lose its 'extra something', its extra meaning, because it would have nothing to distinguish it from.

This is an important fact to realize for two reasons: (A) it allows Saussure to argue that signs cannot exist in isolation, but are dependent on a system from within which they must be deduced in analysis, rather than the system itself being built up from isolated signs; and (B) he could discover grammatical facts through syntagmatic and paradigmatic analyses.

Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations[edit]

Language works through relations of difference, then, which place signs in opposition to one another. Saussure asserted that there are only two types of relations: syntagmatic and paradigmatic. The latter is associative, and clusters signs together in the mind, producing sets: sat, mat, cat, bat, for example, or thought, think, thinking, thinker. Sets always involve a similarity, but difference is a prerequisite, otherwise none of the items would be distinguishable from one another: this would result in there being a single item, which could not constitute a set on its own.

These two forms of relation open linguistics up to phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Take morphology, for example. The signs cat and cats are associated in the mind, producing an abstract paradigm of the word forms of cat. Comparing this with other paradigms of word forms, we can note that in the English language the plural often consists of little more than adding an s to the end of the word. Likewise, in syntax, through paradigmatic and syntagmatic analysis, we can discover the grammatical rules for constructing sentences: the meaning of je dois ('I should') and dois je? ('Should I?') differ completely simply because of word order, allowing us to note that to ask a question in French, you only have to invert the word order. A third valuation of language stems from its social contract, or its accepted use in culture as a tool between two humans.

Since syntagmas can belong to speech, the linguist must identify how often they are used before he can be assured that they belong to the language.

Synchronic and diachronic axes[edit]

To consider a language synchronically is to study it 'as a complete system at a given point in time,' a perspective he calls the AB axis. By contrast, a diachronic analysis considers the language 'in its historical development' (the CD axis). Saussure argues that we should be concerned not only with the CD axis, which was the focus of attention in his day, but also with the AB axis because, he says, language is 'a system of pure values which are determined by nothing except the momentary arrangements of its terms'.

To illustrate this, Saussure uses a chess metaphor. We could study the game diachronically (how the rules change through time) or synchronically (the actual rules). Saussure notes that a person joining the audience of a game already in progress requires no more information than the present layout of pieces on the board and who the next player is. There would be no additional benefit in knowing how the pieces had come to be arranged in this way.

Geographic linguistics[edit]

A portion of Course in General Linguistics comprises Saussure's ideas regarding the geographical branch of linguistics.^[2]

According to Saussure, the geographic study of languages deals with external, not internal, linguistics. Geographical linguistics, Saussure explains, deals primarily with the study of linguistic diversity across lands, of which there are two kinds: diversity of relationship, which applies to languages assumed to be related; and absolute diversity, in which case there exists no demonstrable relationship between compared languages. Each type of diversity constitutes a unique problem, and each can be approached in a number of ways.

For example, the study of Indo-European languages and Chinese (which are not related) benefits from comparison, of which the aim is to elucidate certain constant factors which underlie the establishment and development of any language. The other kind of variation, diversity of relationship, represents infinite possibilities for comparisons, through which it becomes clear that dialects and languages differ only in gradient terms. Of the two forms of diversity, Saussure considers diversity of relationship to be the more useful with regard to determining the essential cause of geographical diversity.

While the ideal form of geographical diversity would, according to Saussure, be the direct correspondence of different languages to different areas, the asserted reality is that secondary factors must be considered in tandem with the geographical separation of different cultures.

For Saussure, time is the primary catalyst of linguistic diversity, not distance. To illustrate his argument, Saussure considers a hypothetical population of colonists, who move from one island to another. Initially, there is no difference between the language spoken by the colonists on the new island and their homeland counterparts, in spite of the obvious geographical disconnect. Saussure thereby establishes that the study of geographical diversity is necessarily concentrated upon the effects of time on linguistic development. Taking a monoglot community as his model (that is, a community which speaks only one language), Saussure outlines the manner in which a language might develop and gradually undergo subdivision into distinct dialects.

Saussure's model of differentiation has 2 basic principles: (1) that linguistic evolution occurs through successive changes made to specific linguistic elements; and (2) that these changes each belong to a specific area, which they affect either wholly or partially.

It then follows from these principles that dialects have no natural boundary, since at any geographical point a particular language is undergoing some change. At best, they are defined by 'waves of innovation'—in other words, areas where some set of innovations converge and overlap.

The 'wave' concept is integral to Saussure's model of geographical linguistics—it describes the gradient manner in which dialects develop. Linguistic waves, according to Saussure, are influenced by two opposed forces: parochialism, which is the basic tendency of a population to preserve its language's traditions; and intercourse, in which communication between people of different areas necessitates the need for cross-language compromise and standardization. Intercourse can prevent dialectical fragmentation by suppressing linguistic innovations; it can also propagate innovations throughout an area encompassing different populations. Either way, the ultimate effect of intercourse is unification of languages. Saussure remarks that there is no barrier to intercourse where only gradual linguistic transitions occur.

Having outlined this monoglot model of linguistic diversity, which illustrates that languages in any one area are undergoing perpetual and nonuniform variation, Saussure turns to languages developing in two separate areas.

In the case of segregated development, Saussure draws a distinction between cases of contact and cases of isolation. In the latter, commonalities may initially exist, but any new features developed will not be propagated between the two languages. Nevertheless, differentiation will continue in each area, leading to the formation of distinct linguistic branches within a particular family.

The relations characterizing languages in contact are in stark contrast to the relations of languages in isolation. Here, commonalities and differences continually propagate to one another—thus, even those languages that are not part of the same family will manage to develop common features.

Criticism[edit]

See Structural linguistics#Recent reception.

Editions[edit]

There have been two translations into English, one by Wade Baskin (1959), and one by Roy Harris (1983).

• Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Eds. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. Trans. Roy Harris. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court. 1983 ISBN0-8126-9023-0

Ferdinand De Saussure Pdf

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

1. ^Harris, Roy. 1988. Language, Saussure and Wittgenstein. Routledge. p. ix.
2. ^This section of the article references the Roy Harris translation of the book.

Bibliography[edit]

• Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2000. ISBN0-19-285383-X.
• Culler, Jonathan. Saussure. Fontana. 1976. ISBN0-00-633743-0.
• Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Blackwell Publishers. 1999. ISBN0-631-20188-2.
• Godel, R. Les sources manuscrites du Cours de linguistique générale de F. de Saussure. Genève – Paris 1957.
• Harris, Roy. Reading Saussure: A critical commentary on the Cours de linguistique générale. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court. 1987. ISBN0-8126-9049-4
• Mauro, T. de. (ed.), Edition critique du `Cours de linguistique générale' de F. de Saussure. Paris 1972.
• Saussure, Ferdinand de. Cours in Literary Theory: An Anthology ed. by Michael Ryan and Julie Rivkin. Blackwell Publishers. 2001. ISBN1-4051-0696-4.

General Linguistics Saussure Pdf