Ferdinand de Saussure inside and outside linguistics
Nigel Vincent
24 February 2016
1. F. de Saussure
He did not arrive in Paris from Leipzig and Berlin
with the ideas that generated the Cours, and he
did not leave Paris without them. Hans Aarsleff
1982: 393
Parisian environment was important to him.
19th century linguistics flourished in Germany and
Scandinavia with scholars like Rask, Grimm and
Bopp.
One of the reasons why language change is sound
change. It is possible to reconstruct how language
was in the past (changes can be reversed).
Languages can be grouped into families.
2. Comparative method
CM relies on the fact that forms and meanings
change independently of each other.
Mmoire sur le systme primitif des voyelles en
Indo-Europen (Leipzig 1878). Written when Saus-
sure was 21. 300-page analysis of vowels alterna-
tions in I-E.
3. Cours de Linguistique Gn-
rale
Is this something Saussure thought? Or this is the
thinking of other people (i.e. his students)?
The editors did not themselves attend his most
recent lectures.
It was published in his name in 1916.
4. Saussuren ideas
Langue vs. parole vs. langage
Langage: general phenomenon of language
(all humans have language)
Language as a structured system of signs and not
a nomenclature. The way the signs interact creates
things.
1
Arbitrariness of the sign: signifi (content or mea-
ning) and signifiant.
Relations between units defined negatively. What
matters is not that /k/ and /g/ are velar etc., but
that one is not the other.
Language is a pure institution, naturally given,
does not have to respond to anyting.
Fundamental ideas of the Cours:
Linguistics has as its one and only true ob-
ject the language considered in and for itself.
Was it Saussure whose idea this was? Or was
it the editors?
Synchrony vs. diachrony: the Saussurean firewall
We dont need to know the history of a lan-
guage to know its structure (and to use it).
Languages change over time but individuals
do not bring about the changes.
No individual can change the language,
but language does change.
Language is social but no move to sociolin-
guistics.
Constrast work at the same period within lin-
guistic geography by scholars like Jules Gilli-
ron and Louis Gauchat.
Paradigmatic [associative] vs. syntagmatic
Analogy and motivation: red wine vs read-
coat.
Associative constrasted with syntagmatic but
there is no real discussion of syntax.
5. Structuralism: Europe vs
USA
Schools of Geneva (Sechehaye, Bally), Copenha-
gen (Hjelmslev), Prague (Jakobson, Trubetzkoy)
American Structuralism (Leonard Bloomfield, Ze-
lligHarris) has different roots:
Close links to anthropology
Descriptive tradition based on fieldwork
Insistence on methodological precision
Strongly influenced by bahaviourist psycho-
logy
6. Saussure and Chomsky Coseriu introduces a three-way concept: system
(of structural possibilities) vs norm (socially ac-
Langue vs parole similar but not same as cepted uses within the system) vs parole (indivi-
Chomskys distinction between competence and dual speech).
performance.
Grammaticalization
Same separation between synchrony and dia-
chrony but for different reasons
10. Other disciplines
Syntax undeveloped within Saussure but central
to Chomskys thought Anthropology: Lvi-Strauss
No Saussurean equivalent of UG (the organ of lan- Literary criticism: formalism and the structural
guage). organization of the text. Bakhtin
Post-structuralism: Barthes, Derrida, De Man.
7. Linguistics in Paris
Chair of Comparative Grammar at the Collge de
France three holders span more than century:
Michel Bral, Antoine Meillet, mile Benvniste.

Meillet: author of many books and articles.

Espouses an anti-realist view of reconstruc-
tion. Saussure and Meillet were in Paris at
the same time.
Benvniste: very productive and interested
in IE languages. He does some things that
are the beginnings of the post-structuralism.
Best known for his questions about the struc-
ture of the way we link language and the uses
in context. Theres only two grammatical
persons: I and you. What is not first and se-
cond (third) is a non-person. Also famous
for distinction histoire/discours.

8. Histoire vs discours
A constrast first conceived by Benveniste in 1959.

Histoire: involves object narrative; preferred tense

the simpel past: elle fit.

Discours: utterance (nonciation) that presuppo-

ses a speaker and a hearer; preferred tense present
perfect: elle a fait.

Subjectivity in language

9. Synchrony vs diachrony after

Saussure
Generatuve grammar and change as reanalysis:
new learners who learn the system produce mi-
sanalyses and those get into the language.

Martinet and the notion of chain shift. What he

was trying to do was to say that certain sound
changes follow because other sounds change. One
change is a response to other changes. Same notion
taken by sociolinguistics (Labov in the study of
variation).