Rolien Mark M.

Balisi
LINGG 206 SJKL

Written Report on Ferdinand de Saussure’s Influence on Structuralism

Contents:
 A Background on Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure is a Swiss linguist and semiotician. His ideas laid a foundation for
many significant developments in both linguistics and semiology in the 20th century.
1857 – Born in Geneva. Showed signs of considerable talent and intellectual ability as
early as the age of 14.
1876 – He commenced graduate work at the University of Leipzig after studying Latin,
Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit at the University of Geneva.
1878 – At 21, he published a book titled Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles
dans les langues indo-européennes (Dissertation on the Primitive Vowel System in Indo-
European Languages).
1879 – Studied for a year at the University of Berlin under the Privatdozent Heinrich
Zimmer, with whom he studied Celtic, and Hermann Oldenberg with whom he continued his
studies of Sanskrit.
1880 – Returned to Leipzig to defend his doctoral dissertation De l'emploi du génitif
absolu en Sanscrit, and was awarded his doctorate in February 1880. Saussure later relocated
to the University of Paris, where he lectured on Sanskrit, Gothic, Old High German, Celtic, and
Lithuanian. He 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).
1892 – He was offered a professorship in Geneva, Switzerland, as a Professor in
Comparative Linguistics. Saussure was familiar with and sympathetic towards the work of
contemporary neurologists and psychologists Paul Broca, Carl Wernicke, Carl Jung, and Sigmund
Freud; as well as sociologists Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. He lectured on Sanskrit and
Indo-European at the University of Geneva for the remainder of his life.
1907 – Saussure began teaching the Course of General Linguistics, which he would offer
three times, ending in the summer of 1911.
1913 – Saussure died in Vufflens-le-Château, Vaud, Switzerland.
 1916 – 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.
 Saussure before The Cours
As a student, Saussure produced theoretical reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European
language vocalic system and the existence of sonant coefficients. In his Mémoire, Saussure also
claimed that Indo-European roots have a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant structure.
Many years later, Scandinavian scholar Hermann Möller later suggested that what
Saussure might be actually describing laryngeal consonants, leading to what is now known as
the laryngeal theory. It has been argued that the problem that Saussure encountered in
completing his Mémoire stimulated his development of structuralism. Some 50 years later, his
predictions about the existence of primate coefficients/laryngeals and their evolution proved a
success when Hittite texts were discovered and deciphered.
Saussure studied among the neogrammarians in Leipzig and received his doctorate from
there in 1881. His Mémoire is based on abstract morphophonemic analysis in which the
postulated abstract elements are defined on structural function rather than phonetic shape –
which is totally different from his contemporaries.
Although acclaimed by his colleagues, and devoted to the study of language, Saussure’s
published output began to dwindle as the years wore on. He stated that he was dissatisfied
with the nature of linguistics as a discipline – with its lack of reflexiveness, as with its
terminology. He was unable to write the book which would revamp the discipline and enable
him to continue his work in philology. His emphasis on language as a structured system makes it
appropriate to label Saussure a structuralist, although the term was not in use during his
lifetime.
His compiled posthumous work, Course in General Linguistics, could be seen as a partial
fulfillment of Saussure’s belief that language needed to be re-examined if linguistics was to
move on to a sounder footing.
 Saussure during The Cours
During Saussure’s time, the historical approach to language and, to a lesser extent, the
rationalist approach, assumes that language is essentially a naming process – and that there is
some kind of intrinsic link between the name and its object. A particular name came to be
attached to a particular object or idea, could, it was believed, be determined historically – or
even prehistorically.
As Saussure put it, such a perspective assumes that language is essentially a
nomenclature: a collection of names for objects and ideas. He challenged the view of reality as
independent and existing outside language and reduced language to a mere “naming system”.
He questioned the conventional “correspondence theory of meaning” and argued that meaning
is arbitrary, and that language does not merely reflect the world, but constitutes it.
Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (1916) is a summary of his
lectures at the University of Geneva from 1906 to 1911. Saussure examines the relationship
between speech and the evolution of language, and investigates language as a structured
system of signs. The text includes an introduction to the history and subject-matter of
linguistics, such as:
 Appendix entitled “Principles of Phonology”
 Five main sections, titled:
o “Part One: General Principles,”
o “Part Two: Synchronic Linguistics,”
o “Part Three: Diachronic Linguistics,”
o “Part Four: Geographical Linguistics,”
o “Part Five: Concerning Retrospective Linguistics.”

Saussure’s approach, as exemplified in the Course, is generally thought to have opposed

two influential contemporary views of language.
First, established in 1660 by the Port-Royal philosophers, Arnauld and Lancelot in their
Grammaire generale et raisonnee (The Port Royal Grammar), saw language is seen as a mirror
of thoughts and based on a universal logic. Therefore, language is fundamentally rational.
Second, nineteenth-century linguistics or (Neogrammarians), focused on the history of a
particular language is deemed to explain the current state of that language. They also deemed
that Sanskrit, the sacred language of ancient India, is believed to be the oldest of languages,
was also believed to function as the connecting link between all languages, and that ultimately,
language and its history would become one with each other.
Franz Bopp’s thesis on the conjugation system of Sanskrit as compared with other
languages The Conjugation System of the Sanskrit Language inaugurated historical linguistics,
and Saussure’s early teaching and research did not contradict the Neogrammarian position on
the fundamental importance of history for understanding the nature of language.
 Saussure during The Cours: Defining Language
Language is, automatically, to focus on the relationship between the elements of that
language and not on their intrinsic value. For Saussure, language is always organized in a
specific way. It is a system, or a structure, where any individual element is meaningless outside
the confines of that structure. This implies that a language exists as a kind of totality, or it does
not exist at all.
 Saussure during The Cours: The Sign
 The most fundamental binary opposition is related to the concept of sign, the basic unit
of signification. For Saussure, the previously undivided sign gets divided into:
 the signifier/signifiant (the sound image) and
 the signified/signifie (the concept).
Saussure stressed that the relationship between the signifier and the signified is
conventional and arbitrary, and that both terms are psychological in nature. There is no one-to-
one relation between the signifier and the signified.
In contrast to the tradition within which he was brought up, therefore Saussure does
not accept that the essential bond in language is between word and thing. Instead, Saussure’s
concept of the sign points to the relative autonomy of language in relation to reality.
In light of this principle, the basic structure of language is no longer assumed to be
revealed by etymology and philology, but can best be grasped by understanding how language
states. A sign can be altered by a change in the relationship between the signifier and the
signified. According to Saussure, changes in linguistic signs originate in changes in the social
activity of speech.
 Saussure during The Cours: The concept of langue & parole
Saussure called the structure of language langue (the French word for language), and
the individual utterances that occur when we speak parole (the French word for speech).
Langage, which comprises langue and parole.
Speaking is an activity of the individual, while language is the social manifestation of
speech. Therefore, language is a system of signs that evolves from the activity of speech.
 Saussure during The Cours: Synchrony & Diachrony
Saussure distinguishes between synchronic (static) linguistics and diachronic
(evolutionary) linguistics. For Saussure:
 Synchronic linguistics is the study of language at a particular point in time.
 Diachronic linguistics is the study of the history or evolution of language.
According to Saussure, diachronic change originates in the social activity of speech.
Changes occur in individual patterns of speaking before becoming more widely accepted as a
part of language. In addition, Saussure noted that:
 Synchronic reality is found in the structure of language at a given point in time.
 Diachronic reality is found in changes of language over a period of time.
To illustrate this, Saussure uses a chess metaphor. According to Saussure, 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.

 Saussure during The Cours: Paradignmatic & Syntagmatic Relations

Paradigmatic relations hold among sets of units that exist in the mind, such as the set
distinguished phonologically by variation in their initial sound cat, bat, hat, mat, fat, or the
morphologically distinguished set ran, run, running. The units of a set must have something in
common with one another, but they must contrast too.
Syntagmatic relations, in contrast, are concerned with how units, once selected from
their paradigmatic sets of oppositions, are 'chained' together into structural wholes.
 Saussure during The Cours: Units, Value, & System
Saussure says that nothing enters written language without having been tested in
spoken language. Language is changed by the rearranging and reinterpreting of its units. A unit
is a segment of the spoken chain that corresponds to a particular concept. Saussure’s
investigation of structural linguistics gives us a clear and concise presentation of the view that
language can be described in terms of structural units.
He explains that this structural aspect means that language also represents a system of
values. Linguistic value can be viewed as a quality of the signified, the signifier, or the complete
sign. The linguistic value of a word (a signifier) comes from its property of standing for a
concept (the signified). Saussure shows that the meaning or signification of signs is established
by their relation to each other. The relation of signs to each other forms the structure of
language.
 Saussure during The Cours: Arbitrariness
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). For Saussure, languages reflect shared experience in complicated ways and can paint
very different pictures of the world from one another. 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.
Saussure recognized 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.
 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).

 Saussure during The Cours: Geographic Linguistics

According to Saussure, the geographic study of languages deals with external, not
internal, 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.
 Absolute diversity, in which case there exists no demonstrable relationship between
compared languages.
For Saussure, time is the primary catalyst of linguistic diversity, not distance. Saussure
thereby establishes that the study of geographical diversity is necessarily concentrated upon
the effects of time on linguistic development. Saussure's model of differentiation has 2 basic
principles:
 that linguistic evolution occurs through successive changes made to specific linguistic
elements.
 that these changes each belong to a specific area, which they affect either wholly or
partially.
Differentiation was 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.
 Intercourse, in which communication between people of different areas necessitates
the need for cross-language compromise and standardization.

 Saussure after The Cours: In Europe & America

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. His work 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 and the post-
Bloomfieldian structuralism of such scholars as:
 Eugene Nida
 Bernard Bloch
 George L. Trager
 Rulon S. Wells III
 Charles Hockett
 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

References:
Allan, K. (2009). The Western Classical Tradition in Linguistics, 2nd Edition. Equinox. London.
Bussman, H. (1996). Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. Routledge. London.
Peregrin, J. (1995). Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague I. Structural Linguistics and Formal
Semantics. Benjamins. Amsterdam.
Sanders, C. (2004). The Cambridge Companion to Saussure. Cambridge University Press.
Cambridge.
Saussure, F.de. (1916). Cours de linguistique générale, ed. C. Bally and A. Sechehaye. Paris.
(Course in general linguistics, trans. R.Harris. London, 1983)