Cours De Linguistique Research Articles

Grundlagen einer 'integralen' Grammatik

Within the framework of an integral grammar, syntax, morphology and lexicology represent three types of consideration of the same reality, which is the linguistic construction of meaning. The distinction between these three linguistic disciplines may be useful in some cases, but in other cases it may hinder the explanation of linguistic phenomena. Integral linguistics is capable of unifying the disciplines - integrating them. It can, however, use modular methods where appropriate. It could therefore be seen as a kind of construction grammar with the option of modularising its descriptions and explanations. This is not to say that this approach advocates methodical indifference; on the contrary, it presupposes a particularly rigorous deduction of its concepts and descriptive methods. The foundations for such a grammar have already been laid in Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale, which – with striking foresight – anticipates the ideas of nowadays' construction grammars and provides them with a hitherto unprecedented theoretical foundation. This is the starting point for the present article, which places Saussure's reflections within the framework of a theory of language centred on the speech event. It defines the functional levels of the sentence on the ground of the dimensions of utterance meaning, deduces the notions of syntactic function and syntactic constituency from the synthetic and analytical mechanisms of the syntagmatic dimension of language, and those of form and category from the abstraction principles of the paradigmatic dimension of language. Finally, it will be shown how the basic ideas of constructional grammars, in particular that of the syntax lexicon continuum, can be convincingly and exhaustively explained by the universal principles of grammar postulated by Saussure: the syntagmatic and paradigmatic structuration of language.

Uncovering the two conceptions of the linguistic sign in Saussure’s lectures: An epistemological inquiry with comments on translational equivalence

The principal object of this study is constituted by two epistemologically distinct models of Ferdinand de Saussure’s depictions of the linguistic sign. The first model pertains to a bilateral conception of the sign as an inseparable unity of two sides that evoke each other in the mind of individuals during their speaking and understanding activities. The second model, termed here as ‘unilateral conception’, has been deduced from Saussure’s understanding of parole, where an idea establishes itself in a sound and a sound becomes the sign for an idea. A survey of related terminological distinctions derived from logic and philosophy as well as linguistic semiotics seems indispensable for presenting the positions of these bilateral and unilateral sign concepts in a typological matrix which could embrace all sign models originating in the sciences of language. The additional purpose of this study is to put forward the idea of epistemological equivalence to be achieved in translational practice. This supplementary focus of interest in particular concentrates around the question of how the translations of sign-related terms, selected from Cours de linguistique générale, reflect the epistemological awareness of their English-speaking translators.

La sémiologie à l’école de Genève

The term semiology is unanimously attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure. Conceived as an autonomous field of research, semiology is presented as deriving directly from his lectures. Nevertheless, it is not seen as a field of research which has led to the creation of a real school (such as the School of Paris), nor to the instituting of a specific object of analysis. However, a semiological “legacy” stemming from Saussure’s proposals has consolidated. Protagonists of this legacy are Éric Buyssens, Luís J. Prieto, Georges Mounin, and Jeanne Martinet. To understand how their different semiological projects relate to one another, we must go back to the sources. That the definition of “semiology” presented in the Cours de linguistique générale developed across different phases of Saussure’s thought can be seen in the various senses in which it is used. This article examines the meanings which “semiology” has for Saussure and for those scholars who subsequently took it up.

Saussure’s Cours and the Monosyllabic Myth: the perception of Chinese in early linguistic theory

ABSTRACT Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale reproduced a misconception of Chinese as a monosyllabic language without complex words. In this paper, we investigate the sources of this misconception in Western thought. We also show that the misconception about Chinese was already known to be inaccurate in Saussure’s time, and that he had many missed opportunities to find out. While Saussure reproduced the empirical errors of Comparatists and Neogrammarians with respect to Chinese, he moved away from the cultural prejudices and attitudes that were behind their claims. This turn, we argue, illustrates an important aspect of the Saussurean scientific revolution, which was fuelled more by fundamental conceptual changes than by empirical discoveries.

Opposition, comparison, and associativity: On Luis J. Prieto as a reader of the Cours de linguistique générale

This paper aims to show the role played by the relations of comparison and associativity, as they are introduced in Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale, in the theories of Luis J. Prieto. This is done, first, on the basis of a historiographical approach, and second, on the basis of an exegetical approach to Prieto’s works. Thus, the paper first presents and analyses three programmes, corresponding to three courses Prieto gave at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba during the early 1950s. The analysis of these programmes will show the centrality of Saussure’s Cours in Prieto’s linguistic theorizing. After this, an attempt will be made to show the continuity between the theoretical tenets presupposed by the courses’ programmes and the main proposal advanced in Prieto’s article “Classe et concept. Sur la pertinence et sur les rapports saussuriens ‘de comparaison’ et ‘d’échange’”. By constructing this continuity we attempt to show: (1) the constant influence the Cours exerted upon Prieto’s thinking throughout his whole career, and (2) that such influence is manifested in the fact that Prieto did not generalize linguistic principles as such, but rather posited that linguistic principles were instances of more general semiotic ones.

Saussure’s dichotomies and the shapes of structuralist semiotics

The Cours de linguistique générale (1916), which became the master text for structuralist linguistics and semiotics, is characterized by a series of dichotomies. Some of them, e.g. langue and parole, signified and signifier, arbitrary and motivated, are very well known, others less so. This paper looks at Saussure’s semiotics in terms of these dichotomies, and considers how later critiques, such as Voloshinov’s (1929), and reformulations, particularly Hjelmslev’s (1935, 1942) and the concept of enunciation which emerged conjointly in the work of Jakobson, Lacan, Dubois, Benveniste and others, were shaped as responses to the Saussurean dichotomies. Also examined in terms of its contrast with Saussure is Bally’s stylistics. The aim is a fuller understanding of the shapes taken by structuralist semiotics, in view of the heritage on which they were based and the broader intellectual climate, including phenomenology and Marxism, in which they developed.

Re-socialising Saussure : Aleksandr Romm’s Unpublished Review of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language

As one of the most original and intellectually daring linguistic works of its epoch, Valentin Vološinov's Marxism and the Philosophy of Language provoked controversial reactions, reflected in the published reviews of the book. However, it is perhaps the unpublished review by Aleksandr Romm that presents a particular interest, as an autonomous attempt to re-conseptualise both Vološinov's and Saussure's linguistic thought. A member of the Moscow Linguistic Circle and the first translator of Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale into Russian, Romm had been an enthusiastic follower of Saussure's work and opposed the general anti-Saussurean movement in Soviet linguistic and literary studies of the late 1920s.
 In his review of MPL, Romm offers an original resolution of Vološinov's antinomy between the so-called ‘abstract objectivism’ and ‘individualist subjectivism’ or, in other words, between the two opposite approaches to language as a specific object of scientific inquiry. In contrast to Vološinov, he does not refute langue, but seeks to combine the Saussurean and Humboldtian frameworks to produce a dialectical view of both langue and parole as simultaneously social product and linguistic activity. This is achieved by introducing a third concept, the word (slovo), which Romm interprets in a phenomenological sense, demonstrating a strong influence of Gustav Špet's ideas and the ‘Špetian’ progress of the scholar's views on Saussure. Although unfinished and unpublished, Romm's review remains an extremely interesting document, which does not only serve as an example of the evolution of Saussureanism, but also as a testimony to the shift of paradigms in Soviet linguistics of the late 1920s.

Semiology: in the light of Saussure’ words

Abstract What does Saussure really mean by “semiology”? This is the question we try to answer in this text. In fact, reading his writings and notes, we realize that Saussure uses the term “semiology” in different contexts and with different meanings. So the notion of “semiology” issued from his works is more complex than it seems because it undergoes several transformations throughout the development of Saussurian thought. The term “semiology” never appears in the texts published during in his lifetime, but we find several mentions of this notion in the manuscript sources that make up the Saussurian corpus. While this term appears first during the period between 1881 and 1891, especially in all the documents known under the title of Phonétique (1881–1885), in the Gothic lessons (1885–1886), and in the manuscript “De l’essence double du langage” (1891), the notion of “semiology” is presented to the public in the Cours de linguistique générale with a very precise meaning that has been taken up in Adrien Naville’s Nouvelle Classification des sciences (1901). Then, after the publication of a large part of Saussure’s autograph writings, Ecrits de linguistique générale (2002), we can return to this notion not only to trace its genesis, but also to better understand its complexity. And this is what we propose to do in this article.

Gloses d’auteur. L’exemplaire du Cours annoté par Louis Hjelmslev

A copy of the Cours de linguistique générale has been found in 2016 in Amsterdam. Internal evidences lead us to believe it was the copy belonging to Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev. The aim of this paper is to discuss this attribution, by resuming Hjelmslev’s biography and academic career (§2) in order to show the plausibility of such hypothesis (§3). We then present (§4) a transcription of the textual occurrences (signs and glosses) found therein, the most relevant of which will be briefly analysed on a conceptual point of view in our final commentary (§5).

The emergence and development of Saussurean linguistic thought and structural linguistics in Turkey

ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to analyse the emergence and development of Saussurean linguistic thought and structural linguistics in Turkey after the 1920s. Although Saussurean and structural linguistic studies can be traced back to the early stages of Turkey, most of these studies flourished after the 1960s. For example, Cours de Linguistique Générale was translated for the first time in 1976. This study has demonstrated that Saussurean linguistic thought and structural linguistics attracted prominent Turkish linguists’ attention. However, probably due to the ideological and nationalistic concerns, conducting a better translation and forming a native linguistic terminology overshadow other linguistic contributions, although Turkish linguists conducted significant works in linguistics.

Linguistic Turns, 1890–1950: Writing on Language as Social Theory by Ken Hirschkop

Reviewed by: Linguistic Turns, 1890–1950: Writing on Language as Social Theory by Ken Hirschkop Craig Brandist Linguistic Turns, 1890–1950: Writing on Language as Social Theory. Ken Hirschkop. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 353. $85.00 (cloth). There was not one single "linguistic turn" in the period 1890–1950, but many, and the variety among the "turns" to "language as such" had as much to do with the social and political orientations of thinkers as with their conceptions of mind and language. Theories about language were, in effect, theories about society by other means. This is perhaps the central thesis of Ken Hirshchkop's provocative and engaging new book, which draws together the work of a bewildering variety of philosophers, linguists, literary and political theorists from across Europe. While it is commonplace to recognize that a conception of society, at least at the level of background assumptions, underlies all writing on language, Hirschkop here makes a stronger claim. For a wide range of thinkers, writing in a tumultuous age when the collapse of European Empires under pressures of war and revolution resulted in the rise of mass political democracy, language constituted a "metonym" for society. Questions of linguistic stability and change, authority, and agency were dimensions of wider questions of social and political transformations. The modalities through which this metonym was enacted prove to be complex and instructive. In a brief but stimulating excursus, Hirschkop argues the most "effective metonym" was achieved by Italian Communist Party leader Antonio Gramsci, who drew upon his linguistic training to theorize the struggle for hegemony while incarcerated in one of Mussolini's prisons (246). The bulk of the book is, however, dedicated to showing that theorizing about society was key to a variety of thinkers who at least on the face of it were much less politically engaged: Ferdinand de Saussure through Ernst Cassirer to Ludwig Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin. If one of Saussure's main achievements was, through his treatment of language as a social institution, to show the neogrammarians what they had done, it was linguists in revolutionary Russia (inter alia Sergei Kartsevskii, Grigorii Vinokur, Lev Iakubinskii) who would show what Saussure had done by making language change and standardization primarily a question of politics (105). [End Page 615] Hirschkop is probably best known for his 1999 monograph Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy, in which Bakhtin's turn from ethics and aesthetics, to language and sociology in the late 1920s, is shown to circle around questions of democracy that are seldom invoked in any direct way. In the intervening twenty years Hirschkop has published nothing on this scale, but more occasional work, such as the coauthored Benjamin's Arcades Project: An unGuided Tour (2006), suggested some of the areas he was investigating. Linguistic Turns, which has evidently been gestating for a considerable period of time, also discusses Bakhtin, but relatively briefly, as the question of democracy and "collective will" is shown to be a much more general movement, and Bakhtin's discussions of style, carnival, and the novel are shown to be symptomatic of, and particularly illustrative of, wider intellectual currents. It is clear why such work took a long time to come to fruition, for Linguistic Turns displays formidable erudition in a variety of areas, and some serious thinking about how a constellation of concerns manifest themselves in a variety of intellectual traditions and social contexts. The result is a work that will be of considerable interest and value to intellectual historians, social and cultural theorists as well as those concerned with the intersection of linguistic and social theory. Moreover, a set of ideas which are in themselves intellectually demanding and occasionally rather technical, are here presented in an admirably clear fashion with no small measure of creativity, elegance, and wit. The book is structured in two parts with an introduction and conclusion. Part one, "Order," focused on "how a society grounded in 'the people' can be both consensual and orderly," begins with a consideration of Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale, approached from the apparent side-issue of analogy, which turns out to be much more central than is generally conceived (22). Next, we...

New developments of Chinese interpretation of Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistic thought

The introduction of Saussure’s linguistic ideas in China began in the thirties thanks to scholars such as such as Wang Li, Gao Mingkai, Fang Guangtao and Chen Wangdao. They were the first to disseminate and apply to the analysis of their language the constructs included in the Cours de linguistique générale. Masini (1985) has thoroughly investigated this issue, pointing out how troubled the first phase of Saussurean studies in China was. Completed in the 1960s but published only in 1980, the first translation of the Cours made by Gao Mingkai marked a new beginning of Saussurean studies in China, as confirmed not only by the debate raised by the reading of this work but also by the translations of other sources which have made the portrait of the Swiss linguist more accurate (Péi 2003; Zhào 2005; Mǎ 2008; Romagnoli 2007; 2012). Three Chinese translations of the Cours, several monographs on Saussure, hundreds of academic papers are now available to Chinese readers, whose linguistics knowledge and linguistic background have also changed compared to the first decades of the last century. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the most recent development of the debate regarding Saussurean linguistics in China. In order to do so, two issues are taken into account: the critical stances expressed by Chinese scholars toward the interpretation of the ideas of the Swiss linguist in China and the latest development of the debate on Saussurean semiology.

“This eternal wanderer”: A non-dogmatic reading of Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale (1916) has been widelyreceived as a dogmatic text, putting forward a reductivist conception of the languagesystem. Yet there are grounds for reading it very differently, as Roman Jakobson(1969) did when writing of Saussure’s “dynamic repugnance toward the‘vanity’ of any ‘definitive thought’”. Henri Meschonnic blamed “structuralists” (alabel which, of course, gets applied to Jakobson himself) for turning Saussure’slinguistics of the continuous into a dogmatic “scientism of the discontinuous”.Meschonnic’s list of structuralist distortions of Saussure is the framework for theargument presented here in favour of a non-dogmatic reading of the Cours.

Ainda (e sempre) Saussure: história, memória e discurso em três versões de um mesmo texto

No presente artigo, desenvolveremos uma reflexão acerca do contexto de produção de três versões do Curso de Linguística Geral (CLG), a saber, a versão publicada na Argentina e aquelas publicadas no Brasil e em Portugal. Nosso objetivo é compreender como o CLG é recebido/lido em cada momento histórico fora do contexto francês. Selecionamo-las não só pela relação singular com a língua, mas porque elas são propostas em conjunturas em que o CLG é recebido/lido de forma diferente. Além disso, nas referidas publicações, consideraremos também uma passagem que é bastante controversa, mesmo na edição francesa, aquela que trata do exemplo dado para ilustrar o princípio do arbitrário do signo. Ao comparar essa passagem nas diferentes situações, queremos entender como se inscreve o gesto de interpretação do sujeito que se responsabilizou pela versão da obra em cada um dos países em questão.

“Le langage est une institution SANS ANALOGUE (si l’on y joint l’écriture)”: L’écriture comme problèmes dans la réflexion théorique de Saussure

AbstractWriting is a subject to which Saussure has paid close attention throughout his career. However, many thoughts developed on the topic by the linguist in his manuscripts do not fully emerge in the Cours de linguistique générale. This article aims to elaborate on the evidence of Saussure’s careful considerations on the subject of writing, which are inherited from the reading of the Cours de linguistique générale. It attempts to show that, because it allows linguistic and semiological approaches, writing is one of the major issues among Saussure’s thoughts. Also, it focuses on one of the questions that the linguist details in his writings: the analogy between the system of language and the system of writing. This article invites to explore anew the topic of writing in Saussure’s works taking into account the diversity of views developed by the linguist on this subject, and the diversity of the writing systems he studies.

The arbre-tree sign: Pictures and words in counterpoint in the Cours de linguistique générale

AbstractIn his three courses of lectures on general linguistics given between 1907 and 1911, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) sometimes drew diagrams and figures on the chalkboard to add a visual dimension to the novel and challenging theoretical concepts he was laying out. Those which the editors redrew for inclusion in the Cours de linguistique générale (1916) – in some cases with significant changes – have had a surprisingly strong impact on readers ever since. If Saussure hoped that the drawings would clear up ambiguities in his verbal text, he might have been disappointed; for while they extend a hand to students and readers to guide them into his conceptual world via the stepping-stones of the semi-familiar, accessible and concrete, they have opened up whole new realms of ambiguity, and strengthened the ones already present in the verbal text. This article examines seven of the illustrations or sets of illustrations in the CLG and the various interpretations to which they have given or could give rise, treating these not as erroneous but as contrapuntal to the text when the two appear to be in contradiction.

Saussure and the psychic

AbstractSaussure’s mid-career involvement in psychologist Theodore Flournoy’s study of the renowned psychic Catherine Elise Müller (alias Hélène Smith) brought him into contact with imaginary languages. Flournoy asked Saussure to see what he could make of some transcriptions of Müller’s trance induced speech, which she had claimed was in Sanskrit or the language of the inhabitants of Mars. Saussure assisted Flournoy in his research from 1896 to 1899 looking for linguistic qualities of Müller’s strange utterances. In doing so found support for Flournoy’s theory of teleological automatism, a process in which unconsciously stored information could be recalled for the purpose of manifesting so-called psychic phenomena. While this episode of Saussure’s career has often been treated as a peculiarity, it is also worth considering points of continuity between Saussure’s analyses of Müller’s glossolalia and the rest of his career. In this essay I will discuss how several of the psychological underpinnings of major concepts expressed in the Cours de linguistique générale found exercise and elaboration as Saussure considered the problem of how Müller assembled her mysterious utterances.

Die Willkür der Zeichen

In his article “Die Willkur der Zeichen” (originally published in: Perspektiven kritischer Theorie. Festschrift fur Hermann Schweppenhauser, ed. Christoph Turcke [Luneburg, 1988], pp. 124-73) Iriving Wohlfarth retraces the role of the conventionalist theory of language within Benjamin's philosophy of language. In this perspective, the central premise of all modern linguistics, namely what Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de Linguistique Generale terms the “arbitrary nature of the sign”, appears as a symptom of what Benjamin calls “the Fall of the spirit of language”, its reduction to a mere means of signification and communication.

La Problématique phonologique: du structuralisme linguistique comme idéologie scientifique . Par Anne-Gaëlle Toutain

Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale focuses on the underlying structure of language (langue) rather than on language use (parole). Anne-Gaëlle Toutain’s study assesses the extent to which Saussure’s theory of structuralism has informed and relates to the development of phonological theory in the works of four eminent European linguists: Roman Jakobson, Louis Hjelmslev, Émile Benveniste, and André Martinet. Toutain argues that Saussure’s theories on language and the questions raised by phonological theories are inherently different in scope and focus, the former focusing on langue and the latter on parole. Her book is presented, essentially, as an attempt to integrate the empirical and scientific study of sounds into the study of linguistic structure: the compatibility of ‘la problématique phonologique’ with Saussure’s structuralism is framed, in the first part of the study, in terms of the relationship between the smallest meaningful unit of sound, the phoneme, and Saussure’s concepts of the signifier and the signified. While the signifier–signified relationship is compatible with the sound–meaning relationship, the latter has not, Toutain argues, been subjected to adequate systematic analysis. Because of this need to establish systematically and empirically the relationships between these concepts as well as to establish an adequate system of classification for sound–meaning relationships, the ‘problématique phonologique’ is presented as primarily analytical rather than theoretical in nature; the importance of empirical data to the development of phonological theory is emphasized. Unlike Jakobson and Martinet’s largely a-theoretical focus on sound–meaning relationships, Hjelmslev’s analysis is shown to be concerned with the relationship between form and substance; for this reason, Hjelmslev is considered to be most closely aligned with Saussure’s theory of structuralism. The second part of this study considers structuralism, as conceived by Jakobson, Martinet, Hjelmslev, and Benveniste, as ‘une idéologie scientifique’, defined by Georges Canguilhem as a discourse that does not recognize the methodological tools needed to respond to the scientific questions central to the analysis (Canguilhem, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une idéologie scientifique?’, in Idéologie et rationalité dans l’histoire des sciences de la vie (Paris: Vrin, 1977), pp. 35–45). The study concludes by positing structuralism as a sort of ‘pilot study’, or precursor, to phonological theory, the latter providing an analysis of parole that attempts to reconcile data with the fundamental abstract theoretical concepts defining structuralism. While there is a tendency to cite large extracts of text, which has the effect of breaking up the prose discussion, Toutain’s study provides a comprehensive analysis and comparison of the seminal theoretical works included, and the discussion rightly calls for the integration of systematic empirical analyses into phonological theory.

Approcci funzionalisti attuali alla luce delle categorie saussuriane

On the background of three major pairs of Saussurean categories, namely arbitrariness and motivation, langue and parole, synchrony and diachrony, the impact of the seminal Cours de linguistique generale on the functional approaches to the study of language is evaluated in the 100th anniversary of its publication. The functionalist approaches are shown to have privileged the study of the motivation of linguistic signs, of the phenomena observable in the speakers’ speech acts (parole) and of the developments they trigger in the course of time. The concentration on these three poles in the consideration of language phenomena has resulted in the neglecting of the aim of linguistic research mentioned in the last statement of the Cours, namely the study of language in se and per se.