Course in General Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure

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Words are not vocal labels which have come to be attached to things and qualities already given in advance by nature, or to ideas already grasped independently by the human mind. On the contrary languages themselves, collective products of social interaction, supply the essential conceptual frameworks for men’s analysis of reality and, simultaneously, the verbal equipment for their description of it. The concepts we use are creations of the language we speak.

Saussure rejected the possibility of an all-embracing science of language, embracing instead a study based on a singled clearly defined concept: the linguistic sign. The essential feature of Saussure’s linguistic sign is that, being intrinsically arbitrary, it can be identified only by contrast with coexisting signs of the same nature, which together constitute a structured system.

In avoiding the linguistic sign, historical philology had failed. It had concentrated upon features which were merely superficially and adventitiously describable in mankind’s recorded linguistic history.

Signs are not to be equated with sounds uttered, or marks on paper, or gestures, or visual configurations of various kinds. These are merely the vehicles by which signs are expressed.

Each sign is a dual entity, uniting signal with signification.

When saussure died in 1913, he left no manuscript setting out his theories in detail. What was published three years later as the Cours de linguistique générale was put together by his colleagues, mainly from lecture notes taken by his pupils

rel:Effective Summarization it is arguable that if translation is taken as demanding linguistic equivalence between texts then the Saussurean position must be that translation is impossible.

Words do not exist as the dictionary portrays them, that is, as fossilized exhibits like dead butterflies in the entomologist’s glass case. The life of words is to be sought in the daily exchanges of actual language-users. Thus far from langue taking priority over parole, it will be parole that takes priority over langue.

This conclusion does not square at all with Saussurean structuralism as commonly construed. at one stroke it destroys the autonomy of the language system. For the system cannot be reconstituted from one day to the next. it is not like the state of the larder or the garden. The lexicographer’s self-imposed task is futile; not because life is too short but because the task rests on a misconception of linguistic meaning. meaning arises from the act of communication itself and the ongoing activities thereby integrated.

Communication depends on signs. But the signs are not established in advance of the act. Their making is part of the act of itself. The process is open-ended.

A brief Survey of the History of Linguistics

Grammar was instituted by the Greeks, is based on logic. It offers no scientific or objective approach to language as such. Grammar aims solely at providing rules which distinguish between correct and incorrect forms.

Philology (the study of language in oral and written historical sources) seeks primarily to establish, interpret and comment on texts.

Data and Aims of Linguistics: Connexions with Related Sciences

linguistics takes for its data in the first instance all manifestations of human language.

linguistic aims

• describe all known languages and their history
• to determine forces operating permanently and universally in all languages, and to formulate general laws which account for all particular linguistic phenomena historically attested
• to delimit and define linguistics itself

The Object of Study

language has an individual aspect and a social aspect. one is not conceivable without the other.

…the notion of language articulation. in latin, the word articulus means ‘member, part, subdivision in a sequence of things’.

(vocal apparatus is secondary) one may say that it is not spoken language which is natural to man, but the faculty of constructing a language, i.e. a system of distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas. The speech circuit: this act requires at least two individuals, without this minimum the circuit would not be complete.

The starting point of the circuit is the brain of one individual, where facts of consciousness which we shall call concepts are associated with representations of linguistic signs or sound patterns by means of which they may be expressed.

Linguistic signs, although essentially psychological, are not abstractions. The associations, ratified by collective agreement, which go to make up the language are realities localised in the brain. Moreover, linguistic signs are, so to speak, tangible: writing can fix them in conventional images, whereas it would be impossible to photograph acts of speech in all their details. The utterance of a word, however small, involves an infinite number of muscular movements extremely difficult to examine and to represent. In linguistic structure, on the contrary, there is only the sound pattern, and this can be represented by one constant visual image. For if one leaves out of account that multitude of movements required to actualise it in speech, each sound pattern, as we shall see, is only the sum of a limited number of elements or speech sounds, and these can in turn be represented by a corresponding number of symbols in writing. Our ability to identify elements of linguistic structure in this way is what makes it possible for dictionaries and grammars to give us a faithful representation of a language. a language is a repository of sound patterns, and writing is their tangible form.

the sign always to some extent eludes control by the will, whether of the individual or of society: that is its essential nature, even though it may be by no means obvious at first sight.

Linguistics of Language Structure and Linguistics of Speech

It is speech which causes a language to evolve. The impressions received from listening to others modify our own linguistic habits. Thus there is an interdependence between the language itself and speech. The former is at the same time the instrument and the product of the latter. But none of this compromises the absolute nature of the distinction between the two.

A language, as a collective phenomenon, takes the form of a totality of imprints in everyone’s brain, rather like a dictionary of which each individual has an identical copy. Thus it is something which is in each individual, but is none the less common to all. at the same time it is out of the reach of any deliberate interference by individuals.

Internal and External Elements of a Language

Eventually, every literary language, as a product of culture, becomes cut off from the spoken word, which is a language’s natural sphere of existence.

Representation of a Language by Writing

Although writing is in itself not part of the internal system of the language, it is impossible to ignore this way in which the language is constantly represented.

Prestige of writing:

• The written form of a word strikes us as a permanent, solid object and hence more fitting than its sound to act as a linguistic unit persisting through time. although the connexion between word and written form is superficial and establishes a purely artificial unit, it is none the less much easier to grasp than the natural and only authentic connexion, which links word and sound.
• For most people, visual impressions are clearer and more lasting that auditory impressions.
• a literary language enhances even more the unwarranted importance accorded to writing. a literary language has its dictionaries and its grammars. it is taught at school from books and through books. it is a language which appears to be governed by a code, and this code is itself a written rule, itself conforming to strict norms – those of orthography. That is what confers on writing its primordial importance. in the end, the fact that we learn to speak before learning to write is forgotten, and the natural relation between the two is reversed.
• when there is any discrepancy between a language and its spelling, the conflict is always difficult to resolve for anyone other than a linguist.

The two systems of writing :

• ideographic, where a word is represented by a a uniquely distinctive sign which has nothing to do with the sounds involved. The sign represents the whole word.
• phonetic, intended to represent the sequence of sounds as they occur in the word. Some are syllabic, other are alphabetic, or based upon irreducible elements of speech.

Physiological Phonetics

Transcription - what are the principles underlying an adequate system of transcription? It should provide one symbol for each unit in the sequence of spoken sounds. But this requirement is not always given due weight.

Is there a case for replacing conventional orthography by a phonetic alphabet? Any such tool is destined to remain a tool for linguists.

We read in two ways:

• a new word is scanned letter by letter
• a common, familiar word is taken in at a glance without bothering about the individual letters, its visual shape functions like an ideogram.

Neologistic Reading Errors, Narrative Resilience

Thought

Neologistic Error Words but for reading. All instance of misinterpreted or misread text.

How many times do I scan a text message, and with the hurry of the conversation misread and thus misinterpret the text? Can I track my gaze and alert when I am misleading myself? Can an error in a single sentence completely affect the course of a paragraph or novel?

I’ve wondered this when reading a book, how all of these things taken for granted and the process of carrying on even with incomplete or fuzzy information. The whole, objective grasp of the book world is impossible. rel: Chronotype

What I mean is that the narrative is resilient, so long as the human continues to read. We trudge on our own. They might become confused in the worst case, but so long as they read, the book continues.

The book form, in fiction, can be highly imaginative and subjective. You’ll see these “book castings” in which fictional characters are starred with real life actors. There’s invariably mismatches and disagreements.

In the absence of concrete visual imagery, the aspect of a human might be just derived from their personality, or the novel’s dialog.

When we read we carry in degrees, some of the creative effort ourselves. You can stop and rescan the page but still gaps might remain (possibly intentionally so).

Also present in a book, forgetfulness. You might not read carefully enough, or stop a book for days. Pieces of the plots are forgotten, confabulated. A film is a condensed form. We might not perceive all of the nuance, but my inclination is to think there is more of this in novel reading.

Writing As Evidence

When a language is no longer spoken, we must resort to indirect evidence. How can we establish what the sound system was?

• External evidence - evidence from contemporary writers who described the sounds and pronunciation of their day.
• Internal evidence - evidence from regularity of sound changes. The phonetic value of a letter is always a product of an evolutionary process rel: Alphabet Evolution
• Contemporary evidence - informative variation of spelling. Poetic texts, carrying rhyme. Borrowed words.

Nature of the Linguistic Sign

For some people a language, reduced to essentials, is a nomenclature: a list of terms corresponding to a list of things. It assumes that ideas already exist independently of words. It leads one to assume there is a link between a name and a thing, is something unproblematic, which isn’t the case.

But it holds one truth, linguistic units are dual in nature, comprised of two elements. The two elements involved in the linguistic sign are both psychological and are connected in the brain by an associative link.

A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept and a sound pattern. The sound pattern is not actually a sound; for a sound is something physical. a sound pattern is the hearer’s psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his senses. This sound pattern may be called a ‘material’ element only in that it is the representation of our sensory impressions. The sound pattern may thus be distinguished from the other element associated with it in a linguistic sign. This other element is generally of a more abstract kind: the concept.

Sign = concept + sound pattern. Propose, Sign = the whole but concept=signification and sound pattern=signal.

The sign is arbitrary

There is no internal connexion, for example, between the idea ‘sister’ and the French sequence of sounds s-ö-r which acts as its signal. The same idea might as well be represented by any other sequence of sounds.

Two objections that linguistic signs are arbitrary

• Onomatopoeic words might be held to show a choice signal is not always arbitrary. But such words are never organic elements of a linguistic system. The suggestive quality of the modern pronunciation of these words is a fortuitous result of phonetic evolution. In case of tic-toc it is only approximate imitation.
• Exclamations - it is difficult to accept there is a necessary link between the exclamatory signal and its signification.

Linear Character of the Signal

The linguistic signal, being auditory in nature, has a temporal aspect, and hence certain temporal characteristics: (a) it occupies a certain temporal space, and (b) this space is measured in just one dimension: it is a line.

in certain cases, this may not be easy to appreciate. For example, if i stress a certain syllable, it may seem that i am presenting a number of significant features simultaneously. But that is an illusion. The syllable and its accentuation constitute a single act of phonation. There is no duality within this act, although there are various contrasts with what precedes and follows.

Invariability and Variability of the Sign

The signal, in relation to the idea it represents may be freely chosen. However, from the point of view of the linguistics community, the signal is imposed rather than freely chosen. once the language has selected a signal, it cannot be freely replaced by any other.

Synchronic Linguistics will be concerned with logical and psychological connexions between coexisting items constituting a system, as perceived by the same collective consciousness. Daichronic linguistics on the other had are concerned with connexions between sequences of items not perceived by the same collective consciousness, which replace one another without themselves constituting a system.

Linguistic Value

Psychologically, setting aside its expression in words, our thought is simply a vague, shapeless mass. Philosophers and linguists have always agreed that were it not for signs, we should be incapable of differentiating any two ideas in a clear and constant way. in itself, thought is like a swirling cloud, where no shape is intrinsically determinate. no ideas are established in advance, and nothing is distinct, before the introduction of linguistic structure.

Analogy and Evolution

Nothing enters the language before having been tried out in speech. all evolutionary phenomena have their roots in the linguistic activity of the individual.

Analogocial innovations aren’t always successful. rel:Things about Eva I didn’t realize Children’s language is full of them, because children are poorly acquainted with usage and not yet restrained by it.

rel:lol dominance

analogy alone cannot be a factor in evolution. it is none the less true that this constant substitution of new forms for old is one of the most striking aspects of linguistic change. every time a new creation is definitely accepted and ousts its rival, there is truly something created and something abandoned. on this score, analogy occupies a preponderant place in the theory of linguistic evolution.

Dialects have no natural boundaries

There are no natural dialects, only natural dialect features.

The term ‘isogloss lines’ or ‘isoglosses’ has been introduced to designate the boundaries of dialect features. The expression is modelled upon isotherm. But it is unclear and inappropriate, for it means ‘having the same language’. Granted that glosseme means ‘linguistic feature’, it would be more accurate to call them isoglossematic lines, if this term were usable. We would prefer to call them waves of innovation,

When one looks at a linguistic map, one sometimes sees two or three waves almost coinciding or even merging over a certain distance.