Ferdinand de Saussure systemic structural description of the language. The linguistic concept of Ferdinand de Saussure. Language is a system of pure meanings
SAUSSURE, FERDINAND(Saussure, Ferdinand de) (1857–1913), Swiss linguist, one of the founders of modern linguistic science, as well as structuralism as a scientific ideology and methodology. The theoretical works of Saussure marked the turn of linguistics from the historical and comparative study of languages in their development (i.e. diachrony) to the analysis of linguistic synchrony, i.e. structures of a particular language at a particular point in time. Saussure was the first to consistently distinguish between synchronic and diachronic approaches to language. His appeal to synchrony revolutionized linguistics. For all the significance of the new theories and methods that have appeared since then, the very type of synchronous structural descriptions he proposed played a decisive role in linguistic research throughout almost the entire 20th century.
Saussure was born November 26, 1857 in Geneva (Switzerland) in a family of French immigrants. At the age of 18 he entered the University of Leipzig in Germany, in 1880 he received a doctorate. Then he moved to France, in 1881-1891 he taught Sanskrit at the School of Higher Studies in Paris. In those same years, Saussure served as secretary of the Parisian Linguistic Society and, in this capacity, had a very significant influence on the development of linguistics. Later, from 1906 to 1911, he lectured on comparative grammar and general linguistics at the University of Geneva. Saussure died in Vuflanes (Canton of Vaud, Switzerland) on February 22, 1913.
While still a student in Leipzig, Saussure published Memoir of the original vowel system in the Indo-European languages (Memoire sur le systeme primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes). memoir(written in 1878), although it remained the only work published by Saussure, immediately placed him among the leading authorities in linguistics of that time. Based on purely structural considerations, he suggested that Indo-European proto-language - the reconstructed ancestor of many languages of Europe and Asia - had special phonemes that disappeared in Indo-European daughter languages (such as Sanskrit, ancient Greek and Latin). This hypothesis, known as the laryngeal theory (the lost phonemes were later tentatively called laryngeals), helped to explain many problems in the study of the evolution of the Indo-European phonological system. Although many of its provisions are not indisputable, the very fact of the existence of laryngeal phonemes in the Proto-Indo-European language is now beyond doubt. In the Hittite language deciphered after Saussure's death, laryngeal phonemes were identified, the existence of which he suggested for the Proto-Indo-European language.
Another important work of Saussure - General Linguistics Course(Cours de linguistique generale) - was published in 1916, after the death of the scientist. This book, in which Saussure himself did not write a single line, is a reconstruction of the course, compiled from the notes of students by students of the linguist Charles Bally and Albert Sechet. Thanks to the publication course Saussure's views on the nature of language and the tasks of linguistics were widely known.
Among the many theories course especially important is the distinction between diachronic (historical and comparative) and synchronic (descriptive) linguistics. Saussure argues that diachronic research must be based on carefully executed synchronic descriptions. The scientist believed that the study of changes occurring in the historical development of the language is impossible without a careful synchronous analysis of the language at certain points in its evolution. A comparison of two different languages is possible only on the basis of a preliminary thorough synchronous analysis of each of them. Finally, according to Saussure, linguistic research is only adequate to its subject when it takes into account both the diachronic and synchronic aspects of language.
The second most important position of Saussure's theory is the distinction between the knowledge of the language by its native speaker and the use of the language in everyday situations. Saussure emphasized that linguists must distinguish between the set of units that form the grammar of a language and are used by all its speakers when constructing phrases in a given language, from the specific utterances of specific speakers, which are variable and unpredictable. Saussure called the set of units common to all speakers language (la langue), and the specific utterances of individual native speakers - speech (la parole). It is language, and not speech, that is the true object of linguistics, since an adequate description of a language must reflect a system of elements known to all its speakers.
Although the need to distinguish between synchronic and diachronic learning of languages is now as obvious to the linguist as the distinction between a native speaker's knowledge of a language and the latter's use of this knowledge, such clarity did not exist in Saussure's era. These distinctions, like many other ideas of the scientist, stimulated the revision of traditional linguistic methods and, according to the famous American linguist Leonard Bloomfield, laid "the theoretical foundation of a new direction of linguistic research."
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913) is called the Copernicus of modern linguistics. The linguistic concept of Saussure is based on ideas of the sign nature and systematic nature of language. The ideas of Saussure served as the basis for the emergence of structuralism in the 20th century. They helped in overcoming the crisis of world linguistics at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century.
F. de Saussure became interested in linguistics in the gymnasium. He studied Sanskrit on his own, and at the age of 12 he met the founder of Indo-European linguistic paleontology, Adolf Pictet. Under his influence, at the age of 15, Saussure wrote his first linguistic work " General language system". At the age of 16, while studying the structure of the Indo-European root, three years before K. Brugmann and G. Osthoff, Saussure accidentally discovered previously unknown Indo-European sonants - sounds that could form syllables. In 1875, Saussure became a student at the University of Geneva, but he had practically no one to study here, and a year later he moved to Leipzig, the largest center of comparative studies of that time. At the University of Leipzig in 1878 Saussure wrote his dissertation " Memoir (study) on the original vowel system in the Indo-European language».
This work outraged the professors of the University of Leipzig, the young grammarians Brugmann and Osthoff. At the very center of neogrammatism with its “atomic” method of analysis, with its fundamental refusal to solve general theoretical problems, a modest student came up with an unusual, mathematically verified theory that made it possible to predict the structure of the Proto-Indo-European root, and also clarified the composition of the vowels of the Indo-European parent language. Saussure was criticized so severely that A Memoir of the Primitive Vowel System in the Indo-European Languages became his only major work published during his lifetime. Subsequently, Saussure published only small notes and reviews, which were not paid attention either in Switzerland, or in Germany, or in France.
The core idea of the "Memoir" was the systematic nature of the language. Proving the systematic nature of the Indo-European proto-language, Saussure put forward a hypothesis about unusual sonants, which were then lost, but are indirectly reflected in the vowel alternations of modern Indo-European languages. Saussure made an important conclusion about the systematic nature of the phonetic and morphological structure of the Indo-European parent language.
So, he came to the conclusion that all Indo-European roots had a uniform structure:
1) each root contained the vowel "e", it could be followed by the sonant i, u, r, l, m, n: (*mer-, ber-, mei-, pei-, ken-);
2) in some conditions, the vowel “e” alternated with “o”, in others “e” disappeared (* mer- // mor-: died, pestilence, die; ber- // bor-: I take, collect, take);
3) where the vowel "e" fell out, the root that did not contain a sonant remained without a vowel. At the root, with a sonant, the sonant acts as a syllabic sound when it is followed by a consonant: *pei-ti → pi-t.
The most important principle of these rules is that under the same morphological and phonetic conditions, the vowels of different roots should be the same. For example, in the first person of the present tense of Indo-European verbs, there is a vowel “e” in the root: German. ich gebe (I give), lat. lego (collect), rus. I carry / lead / carry / weave. The verbal name has a vowel "o" at the root: lat. toga, rus. burden / cart / raft. The participle has zero sound "dra-ny" or contains a vowel, which is the result of the fusion of the original vowel and the sonant "broken" from "bey".
Thus, arguments of a systemic nature ensure the reliability of the reconstruction of the parent language.
In 1880 Saussure defended his doctoral dissertation on syntax. He begins to work at the University of Paris, and in Paris he meets I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay. Then a correspondence began between them. In 1891 Saussure moved to Geneva. Here the scientist studied classical and Germanic languages, linguistic geography, the Nibelungen epic, French versification and Greek mythology. There remain 99 of his notebooks on anagrams in Greek, Latin and Vedic poetry.
Saussure led a secluded life. In the eyes of those around him, he looked like a loser who could not rise to the level of his first talented book.
In 1906, Saussure was offered a position as a professor at the University of Geneva.
F. de Saussure read his course three times without leaving even brief notes of his lectures. In 1906 - 1907. Saussure's lectures on the theory of language were attended by six, in 1908-1909. - 11, in 1910 - 1911. - 12 people. After Saussure's death, the lecture notes were published by Saussure's younger colleagues Charles Bally and Albert Sechet in 1916 as " General Linguistics Course". This year began the triumphant recognition of Saussure's concept, which had a tremendous impact on the development of world linguistics. The "Course of General Linguistics" was reprinted several times in French, then was translated into other languages of the world, including Russian.
In the "Course of General Linguistics" Saussure solved the most important problems of linguistics:
1) Contrasting language and speech.
The central concepts of the "Course of General Linguistics" were speech activity, language and speech. In parallel with the scientists of the Kazan Linguistic School, F. de Saussure began to distinguish between two sides in speech activity: language and speech. Saussure placed this distinction at the center of a general theory of language.
Language and speech are two sides of speech activity. Speech activity is diverse, it includes social and individual, because a person expresses his thoughts in order to be understood by others. In speech activity, the external sound and internal, psycho-logical side are distinguished. Of the two sides of speech activity, language is one, but the most important side that determines all the others.
The main difference between language and speech is that language is social and speech is individual. The social nature of language lies in the fact that it functions only in human society. Language is a product of speech ability and a set of language skills. The child learns it by living in a human society. Language is passively registered by man and imposed on him. An individual species can neither create nor change a language.
Language, according to Saussure, is a code that forms a means for speech activity. But language is also a treasure deposited by the practice of speech in all members of the collective. It is a grammatical and lexical system that potentially exists in the brain of a collection of individuals.
Language is a mental phenomenon, but in it there is only the general, the abstract, the abstract. The psychic nature of language does not deny its real existence. Saussure considers the possibility of graphically reflecting the language in writing as proof of its reality. The reality of language is confirmed by the possibility of studying dead languages from monuments.
Speech is entirely individual. It is an act of the will and consciousness of an individual, it is completely controlled by the individual.
The speech contains:
1) the combinations that the speaker forms to express his thoughts using the social code;
2) the psycho-physiological mechanism by which thoughts are objectified and become common property. Speech includes onomatopoeia, articulation.
Reproduced speech is the sum of everything spoken. Consequently, language is abstracted from speech, and not vice versa: "Language and speech are interconnected, for language is both a tool and a product of speech." Saussure demanded a separate study of language and speech. Language is necessary to understand speech, and speech precedes language. It is necessary for the language to be installed.
Contrasting language and speech, Saussure writes that language should be studied in the linguistics of language, and speech - in the linguistics of speech. Linguistics of language / linguistics of speech is the first crossroads on the path of the researcher, and he must choose one of the roads. You have to go through each of them separately. Until the beginning of the 20th century. linguists, according to Saussure, studied only speech. The linguistics of the language is completely unexplored. Therefore, Saussure's motto was the words: "Stand on the point of view of language and consider everything else from this point of view!" The "Course of General Linguistics" ends with the phrase: "The only and true object of linguistics is language considered in and for itself."
2) Contrasting synchrony and diachrony.
The second crossroads on the path of a linguist is synchrony / diachrony, that is, the study of a language at a moment of rest and in development. Saussure proposes to distinguish between 1) the axis of simultaneity (AB) and 2) the axis of sequence (CD).
The axis of simultaneity (AB) concerns the relationship between coexisting sequences, where all interference of time is excluded. On the axis of sequence (SD) are all the phenomena of the first axis with all their changes, it can never be considered more than one thing at once.
Saussure associated the concept of a system only with synchrony, which coincides with the axis of simultaneity. In diachrony coinciding with the axis of the sequence, in his opinion, there are only shifts that can lead to a change in the system. The transition from one state of the system to another is the result of diachronic displacements of individual members.
Often Saussure is accused of separating synchrony from diachrony, of the non-historical nature of his theory. But Saussure perfectly understood their dependence and called himself primarily a historian of language. Using many examples, he showed the independence of synchronic and diachronic analysis and their interconnectedness, emphasizing their dialectical unity and differences. But at the same time, he constantly reminded students that "modern linguistics, having barely arisen, plunged headlong into diachrony" and neglected synchrony. That is why the synchronic aspect was more important for Saussure. "For speakers, only the synchronic aspect is the true and only reality."
If the linguistics of language is in the realm of synchrony, says Saussure, then the linguistics of speech is in the realm of diachrony. Diachronic studies are possible in prospective and retrospective plans. You can predict the development of a language or engage in the reconstruction of the parent language. Linguistics, which should deal with the rest of the language, Saussure proposes to call static or synchronic linguistics, and the science that should describe the successive states of the language, evolutionary or diachronic linguistics.
3) Contrasting external and internal linguistics.
Saussure attributed to external linguistics all aspects related to the history of society; domestic policy of the state; level of culture; relations between language and church, language and school; geographical distribution of languages and their fragmentation into dialects. Language and social factors mutually influence each other.
Internal linguistics studies only the language system, the relationships within it. Saussure compares linguistics to a game of chess. That the game of chess came to Europe from Persia is a fact of an external order; internal is everything that concerns the system and rules of the chess game. If we replace figures made of wood with figures made of ivory, such a replacement will be indifferent to the system; but if the number of figures is reduced or increased, such a change will profoundly affect the "grammar of the game."
Each of the linguistics has its own special method, says Saussure. External linguistics can pile one detail upon another without feeling constrained by the clutches of the system. In internal linguistics, any arbitrary arrangement of material is excluded, since language is a system that obeys only its own order. Saussure gives preference to internal linguistics, as it was underestimated by contemporary linguists.
When Saussure's works were published, material on the difference between internal and external linguistics was placed at the beginning of the book, and the impression was created that for Saussure this antinomy was the main one. In fact, for Saussure, the main thing was the opposition of language / speech, and the predominance of internal linguistics in his “Course ...” is explained by the fact that Saussure marked a new path along which linguistics of the 20th century went. This path led to an in-depth study of internal linguistics in terms of synchrony.
4) Saussure viewed language as a system of signs..
This idea was developed by Aristotle, the authors of the Port-Royal Grammar, V. von Humboldt, scientists from the Kazan and Moscow linguistic schools.
Saussure was the first to isolate language as a sign system from other sign systems: letters, the alphabet of the deaf-mute, military signals. He was the first to propose to single out the science of the life of signs in society - semiology (gr. semeon "sign"). Semiology, according to Saussure, should be included in social psychology as a section of general psychology. Later this science became known as semiotics.
The definition of language as a sign system was directed both against the individualism of neogrammarists and against the understanding of language as an organism by supporters of naturalism. Any linguistic problem, according to Saussure, is, first of all, a semiological problem, since most of the properties of the language are common with other signs and only a few are specific. Semiological study of the language, Saussure believes, will help to understand the rites and customs of peoples. But the main goal of linguistics is to separate language from other semiotic phenomena and study its specific properties.
5) The Doctrine of the Linguistic Sign and Significance.
Saussure argued that "Language is a system of signs in which the only essential is the combination of meaning and acoustic image, and both of these elements of the sign are equally mental." Both of these elements are in the brain, that is, they are mental phenomena. They are associated by association among all speakers of linguistic unity, which ensures understanding. The thing itself and the sounds do not enter into the sign. A linguistic sign, according to Saussure, connects not a thing and a name, but a concept and an acoustic image.
Schematically, a linguistic sign can be depicted as follows:
The image shows that the linguistic sign is two-sided. The concept without an acoustic image refers to psycho-logy. And only in conjunction with the acoustic image does the concept become a linguistic entity. The acoustic image is not something sounding, material, but only its imprint in the human mind. The most significant in the acoustic image is its difference from other acoustic images. Acoustic images can be represented in writing, the signs of which are imprinted in the mind in the form of visual images that replace acoustic ones.
Linguistic signs, according to Saussure, are real because they have a location in the brain. They are the subject of the linguistics of the language. Linguistic signs are, first of all, words, something central in the mechanism of language.
Having defined the linguistic sign, Saussure names two defining features that distinguish the linguistic system from other sign systems and from social phenomena: 1) arbitrariness and 2) linearity.
The arbitrariness of the sign Saussure understood both convention and lack of motivation. According to Saussure, the sign is arbitrary, conditional, not connected by internal relations with the designated object (Russian bull, German Ochs). Thus, the connection between the signified (meaning) and the signifier (material form) is arbitrary. This manifests itself in a lack of motivation. In the language, only a small number of onomatopoeic words and expressions are motivated (Russian crow, meow-meow, woof-woof).
Motivation is associated with the morphological characteristics of the language. Saussure calls the languages with the maximum morphological motivation grammatical, and with the minimum - lexicological. In the history of linguistics, constant transitions of motivated signs into arbitrary ones are observed. Linguistic signs differ from the signs of other semiotic systems in that the symbol retains a share of natural connection with the signified. For example, the symbol of justice is the scales, not the chariot; the symbol of peace is the dove, not the hawk.
In 1939, a discussion about the arbitrariness of the sign took place on the pages of the journal Akta Linguistics. The French scientist Emile Benveniste opposed the doctrine of the arbitrariness of the sign. He argued that the connection between the concept and the acoustic image is not arbitrary, but natural, since it is necessary. One side of the sign does not exist without the other. But the students of Saussure, Albert Sechet and Charles Bally, defending Saussure's theory of arbitrariness, clarified it: the sign is arbitrary when expressing thought and involuntary when expressing feelings and aesthetic impressions. A.A. Potebnya also believed that when they appear, all words are motivated, and then motivation is lost. Disputes about the arbitrariness - non-arbitrariness of a linguistic sign continue to this day.
The consequence of arbitrariness is the antinomy of the changeability / immutability of the sign. The language is imposed on the speaker and even on the mass, as it follows the traditions of the past. And since the sign knows no other law than the law of tradition, it is arbitrary. However, the history of languages gives examples of changes in both sides of the linguistic sign: both the meaning and the sound composition. Thus, there are factors in language that lead to a shift between the signified and the signifier, precisely because there is no necessary connection between them and the sign is arbitrary. The development of the language occurs independently of the will and consciousness of the speaker on the basis of the arbitrariness of the sign.
Linearity of a linguistic sign means that the signifier is an extension that unfolds in time, a line. Acoustic images follow one after another in the form of a chain and cannot occur simultaneously. The property of linearity was subsequently rejected by linguistics. Linearity is characteristic of speech and cannot characterize a sign as a member of a system. It is quite obvious that in Saussure's doctrine of the linearity of the sign, there is a mixture of the linguistics of language with the linguistics of speech.
The central place in Saussure's concept of a linguistic sign is occupied by the doctrine of its theoretical value, or the doctrine of significance.. The word is defined as a linguistic sign by its place and functioning in the language system, depending on other elements of the system. “Language is a system of pure values, determined by nothing but the actual composition of the members that make up its composition,” Saussure argued. For example, the material from which the chess pieces are made is not important, what matters is their value under the conditions of the game.
Due to the fact that the linguistic sign is arbitrary and two-sided, Saussure speaks of two types of values: 1) conceptual and 2) material.
Conceptual (conceptual) value connected with the inner side of the sign, with the signified. Yes, French. mouton and English. sheep have the same meaning "ram", but the conceptual values of these signs are different, since in French. language mouton = "ram" + "mutton", and in English. The language for the meaning of "mutton" has a special word - mutton.
The conceptual value of a sign is revealed within a given language system, taking into account the words of the same semantic field, synonymous and antonymic series. Conceptual value also characterizes grammar. So, Russian pl. the number differs from Old Slavonic, because it is a member of the binary opposition (singular - plural), and not ternary (singular - binary - plural). Consequently, the conceptual values of signs are determined by their relationship with other members of the system, argues Saussure.
material value is the distinction of acoustic images or signifiers. For example, in the word "wife" in the genus. case pl. number has no ending as a positive material element, and the essence is comprehended by comparison with other forms. Fortunatov-Whitney's theory of zero form and Baudouin de Courtenay's theory of morphological zero are built on this position.
Contrasting is important for all elements of the language, including phonemes. So, the French "r" can be pronounced both as a rolling "r" and as "h". In German, such liberties are unacceptable, because there “r” and “h” are independent elements of the sound system that have a meaningful function (Rabe - “raven”, habe - “I have”).
To prove his thesis “Language is a system of pure values”, Saussure turns to the problem of language and thinking. Thinking that is not expressed in words is vague, formless, and the sound chain does not divide without connecting with meaning. Connecting thinking with sound leads to a distinction between units. Saussure likens language to a sheet of paper, where the front side is a thought, and the back side is a sound, but they are inseparable from each other. The linguist works in the border area, where elements of both orders are combined. And in the analysis it is necessary to go from the whole to the individual elements.
6) The doctrine of language as a system.
Saussure's desire to convince his students of the need for a new approach to language forced him to constantly emphasize the systemic nature of language and talk about the role of differences in this systemicity. He put forward the thesis: "There is nothing in language but differences." "Both the idea and the sound material are less important than what is around him in other signs." For example, the significance can change while maintaining both sides of the sign, if the other member changes (if the dual number is lost, the significance of the singular and the plural changes).
Saussure's merit lies in the fact that he truly appreciated the role of relations in language: "in any given state of language, everything rests on relations." Saussure considered the language system as mathematically exact and likened it to algebra and geometry. He used the terms of mathematics: member, element.
The systematic nature of the language is manifested at the phonetic, grammatical and lexical levels. The language system has two properties: 1) it is in balance and 2) it is closed. It reveals two types of relationships: syn-tagmatic and associative. These types of relationships correspond to two forms of our mental activity.
Syntagmatic Relations occur when elements line up one after the other in the flow of speech. Such combinations that have length can be called syntagmas. Syn-tagma always consists of at least two consecutive units: morphemes, words, phrases, sentences. A member of the syntagma acquires significance to the extent of its opposition to what is adjacent to it. This is an adjacency relationship.
Associative (Saussure's term), or paradigmatic (new term) relationships arise outside the process of speech, in the human brain, on the basis that words that have something in common are associated in memory. According to similar features, they can be combined into groups (for example, according to the common root or suffix; according to the common grammatical forms).
Syntagmatic and associative relations in their totality, according to Saussure, define each language: they combine phonetics, vocabulary, morphology, syntax into a single whole. Saussure's linguistic technique is connected with these two types of relations - to decompose the whole into parts on the basis of syntagmatic and associative comparison.
The activities of Saussure are associated with the Geneva (Swiss) Linguistic School (Charles Balli, Albert Seche, Sergey Osipovich Kartsevsky, Robert Gödel) and the Paris School (Antoine Meillet, Joseph Vandries, Michel Grammont, Marcel Cohen). Both of these schools can be called Saussurian.
Since 1928, Saussurianism gradually develops into structuralism, although this name itself appears only in 1939. Saussure's main theses are on the banner of structuralism: language / speech, synchrony / diachrony, internal / external linguistics, systemicity and sign language.
By the beginning of the XX century. dissatisfaction not only with neo-grammatism, but, more broadly, with the entire comparative-historical paradigm became widespread. The main task of linguistics in the XIX century. - the construction of comparative phonetics and comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages - was mainly solved by the neo-grammarists (the discoveries made at the beginning of the 20th century, primarily the establishment by the Czech scientist B. Terrible of the belonging of the Hittite language to the Indo-European ones, partially changed the specific constructions, but did not affect the method and theory ). The time has not yet come for equally detailed reconstructions of other language families, since the process of collecting primary material has not yet been completed. But it became more and more clear that the tasks of linguistics are not limited to the reconstruction of proto-languages and the construction of comparative phonetics and grammars. In particular, during the XIX century. the factual material at the disposal of scientists increased significantly. In the compendium of the beginning of the 19th century mentioned above. "Mithridates" mentioned about 500 languages, many of which were known only by name, and in prepared in the 20s. 20th century A. Meie and his student M. Cohen of the encyclopedia "Languages of the World" have already recorded about two thousand languages. However, for the description of most of them there was no developed scientific method, if only because their history was unknown. The “descriptive” linguistics, which was harassed by the comparativists, did not go far in its methodology compared to the times of Port-Royal. At the beginning of the XX century. there are also complaints that linguistics is “torn off from life”, “immersed in antiquity”. Undoubtedly, the methods of comparative studies, polished by the neogrammarists, reached perfection, but had limited applicability, including could not help in solving applied problems. Finally, as already mentioned, comparative studies have been constantly criticized for their inability to explain the causes of language changes.
If in Germany neogrammatism continued to reign supreme throughout the first quarter of the 20th century, and its “dissidents” did not reject its main methodological principles, primarily the principle of historicism, then on the periphery of the then linguistic world from the end of the 19th century. more and more efforts were made to question the very methodological foundations of the prevailing linguistic paradigm of the 20th century. These scientists included W. D. Whitney and F. Boas in the USA, G. Sweet in England, and, of course, N. V. Krushevsky and I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, discussed above, in Russia. Opposition to comparativeism as a comprehensive methodology has always been particularly strong in France and, more broadly, in the culturally united French-speaking countries, which also included the French-speaking part of Switzerland and Belgium. Here, the traditions of Port-Royal grammar never disappeared, and interest in the study of the general properties of the language, in universal theories, remained. It was here that the “Course of General Linguistics” by F. de Saussure appeared, which became the beginning of a new stage in the development of the world science of language.
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) lived an outwardly uneventful life, but full of inner drama. He never had a chance to learn about the world resonance of his ideas, which he did not intend to publish during his lifetime and did not even have time to consistently put them on paper.
F. de Saussure was born and raised in Geneva, the main cultural center of French Switzerland, in a family that gave the world several prominent scientists. From his youth, he was interested in the general theory of language, but in accordance with the traditions of his era, Indo-European studies became the specialization of the young scientist. In 1876–1878 he studied at the University of Leipzig, then the leading center of the shortly before formed neogrammatism; K. Brugman, G. Osthof, A. Leskin worked there at that time. Then, in 1878-1880, F. de Saussure trained in Berlin. The main work written by him during his stay in Germany is the book "Memoir on the original vowel system in the Indo-European languages", completed by the author at the age of 21. It was the only book by F. de Saussure published during his lifetime.
As academician A. A. Zaliznyak writes about the “Memoir”, this is “a book of exceptional fate. Written by a twenty-year-old youth, it was so far ahead of its time that it was largely rejected by contemporaries and only 50 years later, as it were, found a second life ... This book is rightly regarded as a model and even a kind of symbol of scientific prediction in linguistics, a prediction based not based on conjecture, but is the natural product of a systematic analysis of the totality of available facts. The theme of the book was to establish the original system of Indo-European vowels and sonants in connection with the theory of the Indo-European root. Much here has already been established by the predecessors of F. de Saussure - the neogrammarists. However, he made a fundamentally new conclusion, which, as A. A. Zaliznyak writes, “consisted in the fact that behind the apparent disorderly variety of Indo-European roots and their variants, a completely strict and uniform structure of the root is hidden, and the choice of variants of the same root is subject to uniform, relatively simple rules. In this regard, F. de Saussure put forward a hypothesis about the existence in the Proto-Indo-European language of the so-called laringals - a special type of sonants that were not preserved in the languages known from the texts, introduced solely for reasons of consistency. In fact, it was about special phonemes, although this term in the modern sense did not yet exist. The idea of a systematic language, which later became fundamental for F. de Saussure, appeared already in this early work. This idea differed sharply from the methodological principles of the neo-grammarists, who worked with isolated historical facts. Only after the work of E. Kurilovich, published in 1927, which confirmed the reality of one of the laringals with the data of the newly discovered Hittite language, F. de Saussure's hypothesis was developed in Indo-European studies.
"A Memoir on the Initial Vowel System in the Indo-European Languages" was published in Russian in the most complete edition of the scientist's works: F. de Saussure. Works on linguistics. M., 1977, p. 302–561.
The stay of F. de Saussure in Germany turned out to be overshadowed by his conflict with K. Brugmann and G. Osthof, who did not recognize his innovative ideas. In 1880, having defended his dissertation, F. de Saussure moved to Paris, where he worked with his student A. Meillet and met I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay. In 1891 he returned to Geneva, where he was a university professor until the end of his life. Almost all the activities of the scientist at the University of Geneva were connected with reading Sanskrit and courses on Indo-European studies, and only at the end of his life, in 1907-1911, he read three courses in general linguistics. All these years outwardly looked like the life of a loser who, under conditions of non-recognition, failed to remain at the level of his youthful book. He published only a few articles (apart from minor reviews and notes), and his manuscripts that have come down to us mainly consist of rough and unfinished sketches. Part of the published and manuscript heritage of F. de Saussure was included in the mentioned volume "Works on Linguistics". The basis of his famous book was his oral improvisations in front of students, which the professor did not even think of not only publishing, but also recording. He said to one of his students about his general theoretical ideas: “As for a book on this subject, one cannot even think about it. Here it is necessary for the author's thought to take complete forms. By the end of his life, the scientist lived very closed. In 1913 he died after a serious illness, forgotten by his contemporaries.
The posthumous fate of F. de Saussure turned out to be much happier thanks to his younger colleagues C. Balli and A. Sechet, whose views will be discussed below. Based on the notes made by students of the lectures of F. de Saussure, they prepared the "Course of General Linguistics", published for the first time in 1916. The course was not a simple reproduction of any of the student notes. In fact, anew, on the basis of a significant rearrangement of fragments from different records of different courses (the three courses of F. de Saussure differed quite significantly from each other), with the addition of significant fragments, Ch. Bally and A. Sechet prepared the famous book. For example, the well-known phrase that ends the course: “The only and true object of linguistics is language considered in itself and for itself,” is not recorded in any of the notes and, apparently, was added by the publishers. In fact, the "Course of General Linguistics" is a work of three authors, but Sh. Balli and A. Seshe modestly stepped into the background in memory of the deceased senior colleague. But the question of delimiting authorship cannot be considered the main one: the book in the form in which it came out is an integral work, and it was it that gained world fame.
The book "Course of General Linguistics" quickly became very popular. And today, some historians of science compare its significance with the value of the theory of N. Copernicus. Since the end of the 20s. it began to be translated into foreign languages, with Japanese becoming the first such language in 1928. In the Russian translation by A. M. Sukhotin, it was published in the USSR twice: in 1933 as a separate book and in 1977 as part of “Works on Linguistics” (pp. 31-273).
F. de Saussure, extremely dissatisfied with the state of contemporary linguistic theory, built his course on fundamentally new foundations. The course opens with the definition of the object of the science of language. In this regard, three most important concepts for the concept of the book are introduced: speech activity, language and speech (in French, respectively, langage, langue, parole; in literature in Russian, English and other languages, these terms are often found without translation).
The concept of speech activity is original, and it is not given a clear definition. It includes any phenomena traditionally considered by linguistics: acoustic, conceptual, individual, social, etc. These phenomena are diverse and heterogeneous. The goal of the linguist is to single out the main ones: “From the very beginning, one must stand on the ground of language and consider it the basis for all other manifestations of speech activity ... Language is only a certain part - however, the most important part - of speech activity. It is a social product, a set of necessary conventions adopted by the team to ensure the implementation, functioning of the ability for speech activity that exists in every native speaker. "Language is a whole in itself."
Language is opposed to speech. In fact, this is all that is available in speech activity, minus language. The opposition of speech to language is carried out according to a number of parameters. First of all, language is social, it is the common property of all those who speak it, while speech is individual. Further, speech is associated with physical parameters, the entire acoustic side of speech activity refers to speech; the language is independent of the means of physical realization: oral, written, etc. speech reflects one and the same language. The mental part of the speech act is also included by F. de Saussure in speech; here, however, as we shall see later, he fails to consistently hold such a point of view. Language includes only the essential, and everything accidental and incidental belongs to speech. And, finally, it is emphasized: “Language is not the activity of the speaker. Language is a finished product passively registered by the speaker. It is easy to see that such a point of view is directly opposite to the concept of W. von Humboldt. According to F. de Saussure, language is precisely ergon, and not energeia.
It is indicated that language is "a social aspect of speech activity, external to the individual" and that "a language other than speech is a subject accessible to independent study." Thus, for the first time, an approach to language was consistently formulated as a phenomenon external to the researcher and studied from an outside position. Such an approach, which fully corresponded to the prevailing general scientific paradigm of that era, departed from the usual tradition of anthropocentrism, explication of reliance on the intuition of a linguist, and delimited the positions of a native speaker and a researcher. No wonder F. de Saussure gives the following example: “We do not speak dead languages, but we can perfectly master their mechanism,” although the traditional approach to the so-called dead languages like Latin or Sanskrit was completely different: the grammarian “got used” to these languages, putting yourself in the position of speaking or at least writing on them.
This approach, however, was not carried out by F. de Saussure to the end. He proceeded from the objectivity of the existence of language, pointing out: “Linguistic signs, although psychic in their essence, but at the same time they are not abstractions; associations, held together by collective agreement and in their totality constituting language, are realities localized in the brain. Thus, everything physical is eliminated from the linguistics of language, but not everything mental, and the anthropocentric approach to language is eliminated in F. de Saussure, unlike a number of his followers, not completely. However, as we shall see later, this point of view of F. de Saussure himself is not free from contradictions.
It cannot be said that language in the Saussurean sense has not been studied before. Already the selection of paradigms of Greek declension or conjugation among the Alexandrians is a typical example of a purely linguistic approach: a fragment of a system common to all native speakers is singled out. The novelty was not in itself paying attention to linguistic facts (unconsciously, considerable attention had been paid to them before), but in their consistent delimitation from speech ones. It was this strict distinction that soon made it possible to draw a clear line between phonology and phonetics.
The distinction between language and speech (in contrast to the distinction between synchrony and diachrony, which was immediately accepted by most linguists) not so much expanded as narrowed the object of linguistics, but at the same time made it clearer and more visible. In the "Course of General Linguistics" one of the chapters is devoted to the separation of "internal linguistics", the linguistics of a language, from "external linguistics", which studies everything "that is alien to its organism, its system." This includes "all the connections that may exist between the history of a language and the history of a race or civilization", "the relations that exist between language and political history", the history of literary languages, and "everything that has to do with the geographical distribution of languages and their division into dialects." It is easy to see that such an approach was directly opposed to such areas of modern science by F. de Saussure as the school of "words and things" or "linguistic geography", which tried to overcome the methodological crisis by moving into external linguistic problems. F. de Saussure directly notes that external linguistics also includes such a repeatedly studied problem as borrowings: as soon as a word entered the language system, it no longer matters from the point of view of this system how the word appeared in it.
F. de Saussure emphasized that external linguistics is no less important and necessary than internal, but this distinction itself made it possible to focus on internal linguistics, ignoring the external one. Although among the linguists of the post-Saussurian era there were scientists who, in addition to internal linguistic problems, were actively involved in external linguistic problems (some of the Praguers, E. D. Polivanov), however, in general, linguistics of the first half of the 20th century. could focus on a range of internal linguistic issues. F. de Saussure himself twice included a final lecture on the topic "Linguistics of Speech" in the program of his course and both times did not read it.
What is language built from, according to F. de Saussure? He writes: “Language is a system of signs expressing concepts, and therefore, it can be compared with writing, with the alphabet for the deaf and dumb, with symbolic rites, with forms of courtesy, with military signals, etc., etc. It is only the most important from these systems. In this regard, the linguistics of language is considered as the main part of the science that has not yet been created, studying signs in general, F. de Saussure called this science semiology. Similar ideas were developed during this period not only by him. Even earlier, the American scientist Charles S. Pierce (1839–1914) wrote about this, whose ideas, however, remained unknown to F. de Saussure. Peirce proposed another term for this science - "semiotics", which eventually became fixed. If other sciences are connected with linguistics only indirectly, through speech, then semiology (semiotics) should describe the basic properties of signs, including linguistic ones.
The sign, according to F. de Saussure, is a two-sided unit. F. de Saussure rejected the traditional point of view, dating back to Aristotle, according to which a linguistic unit, primarily a word, is directly connected with one or another element of reality (“the word names the object”). He wrote: “A linguistic sign connects not a thing and its name, but a concept and an acoustic image. This latter is ... the mental imprint of the sound, the idea we receive of it through our senses. Later in the text of the course, however, the terms “concept” and “acoustic image” that have clearly psychic associations are replaced by more neutral ones: “signified” and “signifier”, respectively. The two sides of the sign are inseparable from each other, just like the two sides of a sheet of paper.
Among the properties of the sign, two main ones stand out: arbitrariness and linearity. The centuries-old dispute between the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions of F. de Saussure, as it were, ended with the adoption of the Aristotelian point of view in its most consistent form, natural for the era of positivism: the signified and the signified have no natural connection; onomatopoeia and similar vocabulary, if it sometimes has some kind of connection of this kind, "occupies a secondary place in the language." Linearity characterizes only one side of the sign - the signified - and implies its extension, which has one dimension.
The next question is the contradiction between the immutability and variability of the sign. On the one hand, the sign is imposed on the collective that uses it. According to F. de Saussure, “the language community has no power over a single word; society accepts the language as it is." From this position, in particular, follows the thesis about the impossibility of any conscious language policy, which was later criticized, especially in Soviet linguistics, especially since, in this regard, F. de Saussure directly writes about "the impossibility of a revolution in language." It is emphasized that "language is stable not only because it is tied to the inert mass of the collective, but also because it exists in time." “The resistance of collective inertia to any linguistic innovations” is a real fact, subtly noticed by F. de Saussure, but at the same time he could not but admit that innovations still exist and every language functioning in society is changing. It is curious that F. de Saussure, in connection with this, makes a forecast about the future of the Esperanto language, which became popular shortly before the creation of his course: if it becomes widespread, it will begin to change. The forecast was confirmed.
F. de Saussure finds a way out between immutability and variability in the introduction of the dialectical principle of antinomy (the influence of Hegel's dialectics on the Course has been noted more than once). A linguistic sign can only be used while remaining unchanged, and at the same time it cannot remain unchanged. When the sign changes, there is a shift in the relationship between the signified and the signifier.
This dialectical contradiction is closely connected with the second famous opposition of the course: the opposition of synchrony and diachrony. The introduction of the latter made it possible to radically change the whole direction of the linguistics of the 20th century in comparison with what was accepted in the previous century.
F. de Saussure singled out two axes: the axis of simultaneity, where the phenomena coexisting in time are located and where the intervention of time is excluded, and the axis of sequence, where each individual phenomenon is located in historical development with all changes. He considered the importance of highlighting axes to be fundamental for all sciences using the concept of significance (see below). In his opinion, in connection with the two axes, it is necessary to distinguish between two linguistics, which should in no way be combined with each other. These two linguistics are called synchronic (associated with the axis of simultaneity) and diachronic (associated with the axis of sequence), and the state of the language and the phase of evolution are called synchrony and diachrony, respectively.
Of course, the corresponding difference was implicitly taken into account even before F. de Saussure. He himself quite rightly mentions the strictly synchronic character of Port-Royal's grammar; As we noted above, until the XVIII century. all linguistics was fundamentally synchronous. The understanding of the differences between the two types of linguistic description was also observed in the science of the 19th century, especially clearly in G. Paul, who wrote that before studying the history of a language, one must somehow describe its individual states. The descriptive linguistics of G. Paul and the early J. A. Baudouin de Courtenay is primarily synchronic linguistics. However, F. de Saussure's distinction, carried out with the utmost consistency, had methodological significance in two respects.
First, pre-Sassurean linguistics often mixed synchrony and diachrony. A typical example is the traditional description of word formation, where productive models and “petrified” remnants of models of the past were constantly mixed up, real roots and affixes and simplified elements of past eras were studied on an equal footing. Another example is the study of borrowings mentioned above. Secondly, and more importantly, the system of priorities was changing. If descriptive linguistics was taken into account, then only as the "lower level" of linguistics, as a more practical than scientific discipline. As we have already noted, it was considered an occupation worthy of the author of a grammar school textbook or an official of the colonial administration, and not a university professor. In addition, descriptive linguistics was only supposed to register facts, the explanation of which, according to the science of the 19th century, could only be historical (in the countries of French-speaking culture, however, the latter point of view was not carried out as consistently as in Germany). The "equating" of synchronic linguistics with diachronic rehabilitated the former.
In reality, F. de Saussure went even further. Although, in contrast to external linguistics, the Course contains a large section devoted to diachronic linguistics (and F. de Saussure himself devoted almost all of his scientific activity to it), the idea put forward by him about the systemic nature of synchrony and the non-systematic nature of diachrony, as it were, placed the first above the second. In addition, the “Course” directly states: “Linguistics has given too much space to history, now it has to return to the static point of view of traditional grammar (grammar of the Port-Royal type - V. A.), but already understood in a new spirit, enriched with new techniques and updated historical method, which thus indirectly helps to better understand the state of the language. So, we are talking not just about the equation of two linguistics, but about a new turn of the spiral, about a transition at a new level to predominantly synchronous linguistics. Just as the distinction between language and speech made it possible to temporarily digress from the existence of the linguistics of speech, so the distinction between synchrony and diachrony opened the way to a focus on synchronic linguistics, by the beginning of the 20th century. in terms of theoretical and especially methodological level, it lagged far behind the diachronic one.
This approach seemed too unconventional even for many linguists who sought to go beyond neogrammatism. Prominent Soviet linguist of the 20-30s. R. O. Shor, on whose initiative and under whose editorship the "Course" was first published in Russian, wrote that this component of the Saussurean concept reflects "the desire to substantiate the scientific nature of the non-historical descriptive approach to language." A. Meie, who on the whole highly valued his teacher, did not accept this position either. The idea of historicism as an obligatory property of humanitarian research and of the superiority of historical linguistics over descriptive linguistics seemed to many unshakable. However, it was precisely the rejection of it that made it possible for the science of language to emerge from the theocratic and methodological crisis in which it found itself at the beginning of the 20th century. On the other hand, many scientists did not agree with F. de Saussure's thesis about the non-systematic nature of diachrony, the random nature of language changes; see his words: "Changes never occur in the entire system as a whole, but only in one or another of its elements, they can only be studied outside it." As we will say later, very soon a systematic approach to diachrony appeared in structural linguistics.
We also note that the concept of F. de Saussure not only did not resolve the issue of the causes of language changes that caused so much controversy, but simply removed it from the agenda. F. de Saussure emphasized the "random nature of any state." With an arbitrary connection between the signified and the signifier, the linguistic change can, in principle, be anything, as long as it is accepted by the linguistic community. Of course, this point of view did not satisfy everyone, for example, the concept of E. D. Polivanov was different.
F. de Saussure's concept of synchrony was to a certain extent ambivalent. On the one hand, it was understood as the simultaneous existence of certain phenomena, as a certain state of the language, or, as they began to write later, a “linguistic cut”. However, at the same time in the language, phenomena of different systems can coexist, as well as phenomena with a diachronic coloration: archaisms, neologisms, etc. On the other hand, the systemic nature of synchrony, the complete absence of the time factor in it, was emphasized. The dual understanding of synchrony made it possible to choose one of the more consistent points of view: either synchrony could be understood as a state of language, or as a system of language. The first approach was later characteristic of the Praguers, the second of the glossematics, although both came from the concept of F. de Saussure.
In connection with the opposition of synchrony and diachrony, the Course deals with the issue of laws in linguistics, which caused so much controversy in the previous period. F. de Saussure emphasizes that there is no single concept of this kind, the laws in synchrony and diachrony are fundamentally different. The law in diachrony is understood by F. de Saussure as a whole in the same way as by the neogrammarists: it is imperative, “imposed on the language”, but is not universal and has only a particular character. The laws in synchrony, which were not recognized by the science of the 19th century, have a directly opposite character. - they are general, but not imperative. The synchronic law "only states a certain state." On the whole, F. de Saussure, like his immediate predecessors, the late neogrammarists, treated the concept of law rather cautiously and emphasized that it would be more accurate to speak simply of synchronic and diachronic facts, which are not laws in the full sense of the word.
Turning to the basic principles of synchronic linguistics, F. de Saussure emphasizes that “the signs that make up the language are not abstractions, but real objects” located in the brain of speakers. However, he points out that the units of the language are not directly given to us, that we cannot consider as such, for example, words or sentences. At this point, the "Course of General Linguistics" decisively breaks with the previous tradition, which considered linguistic units, primarily words, predetermined (which did not exclude the possibility of developing criteria for dividing into words in some obscure cases). If pre-Sassureian linguistics proceeded from the concept of a linguistic unit, then F. de Saussure proceeded primarily from the concept of significance, new to linguistics.
To clarify this concept, F. de Saussure draws an analogy of language with a simpler semiotic system - a game of chess: “Let's take a horse: is it in itself an element of the game? Of course not, because in his pure materiality, outside the field he occupies on the board and other conditions of the game, he does not represent anything for the player; it becomes a real and concrete element in the game only insofar as it is endowed with significance and is inextricably linked with it ... Any object that does not have any resemblance to it can be identified with a horse, if only it will be given the same significance. The same is true in language: it does not matter whether a linguistic unit has a sound or any other nature, what is important is its opposition to other units.
F. de Saussure attached exceptional importance to the concept of significance: “The concept of significance ultimately covers both the concept of a unit, and the concept of a specific linguistic entity, and the concept of linguistic reality.” According to F. de Saussure, language is "a system of pure meanings"; "Language is a system, all elements of which form a whole, and the significance of one element results only from the simultaneous presence of others." And further: "There is nothing in language but differences." This understanding of language is not consistent with the ideas of the earlier sections of the Course about language as a stored system in the brain and about the signifier as an "acoustic image". And one more essential contradiction: either the sign has its own properties, or there is nothing in it, except for the relation to other signs.
Another most important concept for F. de Saussure, along with significance, is the concept of form, opposed to substance. Both mental and sound substances are in themselves amorphous and indefinite, but language serves as an intermediate link between thought and sound, imposing on them a certain network of relations, that is, a form. According to F. de Saussure, "language is a form, not a substance." At this point in the Course, the influence of W. von Humboldt is quite obvious, which also manifests itself in terminology. Differing from W. von Humboldt on the issue of energeia - ergon, F. de Saussure agreed with him on this point.
F. de Saussure did not deny the importance of the problem of linguistic units, in particular, the word; he remarked: "The word, despite all the difficulties associated with the definition of this concept, is a unit that relentlessly appears to our mind as something central in the mechanism of language." Of course, the psycholinguistic importance of the word is recognized here. This remark is also inconsistent with the idea that there is nothing in language but differences. However, first of all, for F. de Saussure, the system of differences, the system of significances, that is, the linguistic structure is important (the term “structure” itself is not in the “Course”, but linguistics, which followed his ideas, very soon began to be called structural). Units in this approach are only something derivative: “In language, as in any semiological system, what distinguishes one sign from others is everything that makes it up. Difference creates a distinctive property, it also creates significance and unity. The general recognition of the meaningful approach in structural linguistics did not mean the unity of points of view. As in the case of synchrony and diachrony, it was possible to come to different points of view, starting from different statements of F. de Saussure, to come to different conclusions, either considering language as a system of pure relations (glossematics), or recognizing their own properties for units (Pragians, Moscow school).
Among the relations between the members of the language system, two main types are distinguished. First, there are relationships based on the linear nature of language, relationships of elements that "line up one after the other in the flow of speech." F. de Saussure called such relations syntagmatic. Another type of relationship is associated with the fact that language units are associated with other units in memory (for example, words with the same root, words with similar meanings, etc.) are associated with each other. Such relations F. de Saussure called associative. Later, in connection with the complete rejection of psychologism in structural linguistics, instead of associative relations, they began to talk about paradigmatic relations, while such relations were usually understood more narrowly than F. de Saussure's associative relations: only as relations that have some formal expression. It should be noted that, putting forward the principle “from relations to units” in the general theory, F. de Saussure returned to the more familiar path “from units to relations” in any specification of his theory, including the allocation of types of relations. It remains unclear how the two types of relationships could be defined if the principle “there is nothing in language but differences” is consistently applied. But the very separation of two types of relations revealed two main classes of phenomena that were described in traditional grammars starting with the Alexandrians. In this regard, without denying the traditional division of grammar into morphology and syntax, F. de Saussure proposes another division: into the theory of syntagmas and the theory of associations; within the limits of morphology, syntax and lexicology there are problems related to both the first and the second theory.
The least interesting in the "Course of General Linguistics" are the sections devoted to diachronic linguistics, as well as phonology. Here F. de Saussure was less original. The general theoretical part says that “phonemes are primarily oppositional, relative and negative entities”, however, the phonological section of the book is much more traditional, the main attention is paid to those features that F. de Saussure unambiguously attributed to speech (up to the structure larynx). Although the diachronic part of the "Course" speaks of linguistic geography, linguistic paleontology, and other subjects traditionally included in such publications, despite this, the diachronic part (and the book in general) ends with the already mentioned famous phrase: "The only and true object linguistics is language considered in and for itself.
The concept of F. de Saussure contained many contradictions. Some of them were determined by the history of the preparation for publication of the "Course", composed of heterogeneous lectures delivered at different times. But much was due to the fact that the Swiss scientist did not have time to work out his concept to the end (which is why his lectures were not intended for publication). But the publication of the "Course" in the form in which it became known to world science meant a lot. A number of ideas there turned out to be completely new: suffice it to mention an attempt to consider language as a system of relations or the principles of semiology (already, it is true, developed by C. Peirce, whose concept, however, did not become known in time). Many questions were first clearly posed in the "Kurse". Many problems that generations of linguists struggled with were either more or less convincingly resolved by F. de Saussure, as the problem of the social and individual in language, or simply “closed” (at least for several generations of linguists), as problems of the natural connection of sound and meanings, causes of changes in the language.
But, perhaps, the main result of the emergence of the "Course of General Linguistics" was the allocation of a range of priority tasks for the science of language. The distinctions between language and speech, synchrony and diachrony made it possible to distinguish a relatively narrow discipline with certain boundaries - internal synchronous linguistics. Her problematic was limited to one of the three cardinal questions of linguistics, namely the question "How does language work?". Problems "How does language develop?" and "How does language work?", of course, were also studied, but they faded into the background. The limitation of the subject made it possible, within these narrow limits, to raise the theory and methodology of linguistics to a higher level.
Of course, not only F. de Saussure played a role in a sharp change in the nature of the science of language (as it is now customary to say, in a change in the scientific paradigm). As is usually the case in such cases, such ideas "was in the air" and appeared simultaneously in different scientists. This has already been discussed above in connection with F. F. Fortunatov and especially with I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay. However, it was in the Course of General Linguistics by F. de Saussure (more precisely, F. de Saussure, Ch. Bally and A. Sechet) that the new approaches were most clearly formulated, and the influence of this particular book turned out to be the most significant.
Literature
Kholodovich A. A. About the “Course of General Linguistics” by F. de Saussure. // F. de Saussure. Works on linguistics. M., 1977, p. 9-29.
Zaliznyak A. A. About the “Memoir” by F. de Saussure // Ibid., p. 289–301.
Kholodovich A. A. Ferdinand de Saussure. Life and works // Ibid., p. 600–671.
Slyusareva N. A. The theory of F. de Saussure in the light of modern linguistics. M., 1975.
At the beginning of the XX century. the famous Swiss linguist F. de Saussure first tried establish mutual connections between the facts of language, group them, synthesize into a whole. According to the French philologist E. Benvenista, in our time there is hardly a linguist who would not be indebted to Saussure, and there is hardly a general theory of language in which his name would not be mentioned. more
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F. de Saussure pointed out the subject of linguistics with the utmost precision: "The only and true object of linguistics is language considered in and for itself." This formulation, given in the final part of the book, contains three important provisions, two of which are true, and the third is puzzling, and some commentators on the work of the great Genevan are considered not “Saussurean”, but generated either by the conjecture of the publishers, or (if these are the words of Saussure) lecturer: for simplicity and greater clarity, take everything to the extreme.
First position: the language must be learned in independent science, and not become alternately the object of biology, then physiology, then psychology, then sociology, etc., which do not study the entire language and only by the methods of their sciences. The second provision is about the content of linguistics: it must consider language learning the most important, even “only”, one’s subject (“object”) and not to share this right and this duty with any other science, if one does not want to receive fragmentary judgments about this most complex property of an individual and all mankind (A.T. Khrolenko , V.D. Bondaletov, 2006, p. 67).
F. de Saussure put forward a number of new ideas about language:
1)language as a system;
2)sign theory of language;
3)synchrony and diachrony;
4)syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations in language.
Let's describe them.
1. Language as a system. F. de Saussure strictly distinguishes between three linguistic concepts: speech activity (language), language (language) and speaking, or individual speech (password). Language should not be confused with speech. Language, according to Saussure, is “a social product of speech ability, a set of necessary conditions acquired by the social collective for the implementation of this ability in individuals” (F. de Saussure, 1933, pp. 34–35). “Language,” F. de Saussure noted, “is only a certain part, though the most important part, of speech activity.” Although language is only the sum of the necessary conventions accepted by society, it is it that makes speech activity possible. All components of speech activity that are not related to language, the scientist called the general term - speech.
F. de Saussure used method of antinomies- a way of presenting material in the form of contradictory provisions, each of which is recognized as logically provable. Antinomy contains two sides of one phenomenon, presented as being in an insoluble unity and opposition. The analysis that F. de Saussure conducts in relation to language and speech is interesting.
| Speech 1. Speech ability is universal in nature. 2. Speech is heterogeneous: it varies infinitely. 3. Speech is instantaneous: speech acts cannot be known and depicted exactly. 4. Speech may be lost (for example, with aphasia). 5. Speech activity stops in the event of the death of an individual. | Language 1. Languages are characterized by a national form, are of a different nature. 2. The language is homogeneous: it is something common that unites all members of society. 3. The signs of the language are permanent, tangible, and can be fixed in writing. 4. The language is saved even if there is no playback. 5. Language is preserved for a long time, being fixed in writing. |
F. de Saussure was the first in linguistics of the 20th century. after W. von Humboldt drew attention to general theory of language. But if Humboldt emphasized that language is not a frozen product of human activity, but this activity itself, then Saussure argued the exact opposite: “Language is not the activity of the speaker. Language is a finished product passively registered by the speaker. F. de Saussure delineated "internal linguistics" dealing with language, and "external linguistics", studying that "what is alien to his body, his system." To external linguistics, the scientist attributed the issues of the geographical distribution of languages, problems linking the language with history, culture, politics, as well as acoustics, physiology, and the psychology of speech. F. de Saussure did not deny the importance of studying extralinguistic (extralinguistic, as they say now) questions, but for him they were outside the main problems of linguistics. The “Course of General Linguistics” ended with the well-known words: “the only and true object of linguistics is language considered in and for itself” (F . Saussure, 1977, p. 207). These words are not in any of the student lecture notes of F. de Saussure. Apparently, they were completed by the compilers of the book. S. Bally and A. Seshe(V. Alpatov, 1998, p. 642). Thus, an outstanding linguist of the XX century. significantly narrowed the problems of the science of language, but this narrowing for the first time helped to clarify and clearly define the primary linguistic tasks. After F. de Saussure, linguists for half a century focused on the study of language - its sound structure and morphology, already in a new sense. And they achieved a lot, significantly increased the accuracy of many scientific methods of linguistics.2. The sign theory of language. F. de Saussure wrote: “Language is a system of signs expressing concepts, and, therefore, it can be compared with writing, the alphabet for the deaf and dumb, symbolic rites, forms of courtesy, military signals ... It is only the most important of these systems.” It was the Swiss scientist who proposed the creation of a special science that studies the life of signs within society - semiology, or semiotics, which would also include linguistics as an integral part. Linguistics "as a science
about signs of a special kind”, according to Saussure, is the most complex and most widespread semiological system.
F. de Saussure discovered the fundamental law of language: one member of the system never means anything by itself. The scientist wrote: “It is not the sound as such that is important in the word, but the sound differences that make it possible to distinguish this word from all others, since only these sound differences are significant.” This proposition is now being developed by representatives of various strands of structuralism.
The notion of significance, which is important for Saussure's concept, also follows from the concept of systemicity. The significance (value) of linguistic signs is a set of their relational (expressing attitude) properties that exist along with absolute properties (meaning, sound features, etc.). The sign, according to F. de Saussure, is the unity of the signified (concept) and the signifier (acoustic image), connected according to the principle of arbitrariness. The arbitrariness of the sign is the lack of motivation. Wed Russian dog, English dog, german Hund denote the same animal, but none of the words reflect the properties of the animal. The exception to the arbitrariness of a linguistic sign is only a few onomatopoeic words.
The signifier can be sound - this is most often the case in the language, but this is not necessary. The scientist has repeatedly compared the language with chess. For chess, the rules of the game are important, and the material from which the pieces are made is immaterial; the shape of the figures is also not important in itself, it is only necessary that the figures differ. So for a linguist it is not so important whether the sign in front of him is a sound sign or a written one. But it is important that in human consciousness this or that signified should be constantly connected with a certain signifier. That is, on the one hand, the linguistic sign is arbitrary, conditional (this applies to the choice of the sign), but, on the other hand, it is mandatory for the linguistic community. F. de Saussure emphasizes the social conditionality of the sign in this way: “It’s as if they say to the language: “Choose!”, But they add: “You choose this sign, and not another.” The constant link between the signifier and the signified is the sign. Another feature of the linguistic sign is signifier linearity, that is, the sequential deployment of language units (words, affixes) in the act of speech and the strict laws of their location relative to each other.
3. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations. Developing the theory of the linguistic sign, F. de Saussure studied in detail and comprehensively all the properties of the sign and showed that signs form a system of relations. The dual nature of this system he designated in the form of opposition syntagmatics and paradigmatics. Syntagmatic relations in the system of signs coincide with the linear, sequential arrangement of linguistic elements. paradigmatic(F. de Saussure called them associative) relations are determined by the choice of a particular language element from a paradigm that is known to the speaker.
The differences between syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations can be illustrated by the following example. In the Russian word cat last sound [ t] - deaf. Getting into the syntagma, this sound in the word may not be preserved: the cat is sick. Here, the assimilation of the deaf [t] takes place according to the voicedness of the voiced following it [ b]. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between paradigmatic(vertical) and syntagmatic(horizontal).
4. Synchrony and diachrony. Another famous antinomy of F. de Saussure is the opposition of synchrony and diachrony. From ancient times to the eighteenth century language in European science was considered unchanged. Thus, in the "Grammar of Port-Royal" Latin and French were considered in the same row: for the authors of the grammar it did not matter that French came from Latin (!). In the 19th century the other extreme became dominant: scientific linguistics began to be considered only historical and, first of all, comparative historical. Of course, even before F. de Saussure, there were quite a few both synchronic and diachronic studies. But these two ways of describing a language: a) a static, one-time description of a language in a system, and b) a sequence of linguistic facts in time - the historical or dynamic aspect - often mixed up. The merit of F. de Saussure is a clear separation of these approaches. It is no coincidence that the domestic linguist S.D. Katsnelson called the antinomic method of the great scientist the method of drawing bridges.
The disciples and followers of F. de Saussure do not currently act in unity. Directly developed the views of their teacher Sh. Balli, A. Seshe Russian linguist S.O. Kartsevsky(commonly referred to as the Geneva School). A large group of linguists developed the sociological ideas of Saussure in combination with the principles of comparative historical linguistics ( A. Meie, J. Vandries, A. Sommerfelt, E. Benveniste). Finally, some provisions of Saussure's linguistic concept were the basis of structural linguistics. It includes Prague Linguistic School, the doctrine of glossematics (Danish structuralism, American descriptive linguistics). The term "structuralism" was introduced into scientific circulation in 1939 by the Dutch linguist Pos. This direction is based on a number of principles:
1) the study of language as a sign system with an emphasis on its code properties;
2) the distinction in the language of synchrony and diachrony;
3) the search for formal methods for studying and describing the language.
Many people have contributed to the development of modern linguistics, but the greatest contribution in this area was made by the Swiss linguist, the founder of structural linguistics and semiology (the science that studies the properties of signs and sign systems) and the man who stood at the origins of the Genevan linguistic school - Ferdinand de Saussure.
Many consider him one of the brightest minds in linguistics, calling him the “father” of linguistic science of the 20th century, because his ideas not only contributed to overcoming the crisis of world linguistics at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, but also seriously influenced the entire humanitarian thought of the last century. That is why we decided that it would be very useful to dedicate one of the articles to the concept of this person.
To begin with, it is worth saying that the entire linguistic concept of Ferdinand de Saussure takes as a basis the postulates of the sign nature and systemic nature of language, and his main work is the work “Course of General Linguistics”.
The work "Course of General Linguistics" was published after the death of the author himself by his successors Albert Sechet and Charles Bally, and the materials of the lectures that Saussure gave at the University of Geneva were taken as the basis. Thus, Sechet and Bally, to a certain extent, are considered co-authors of this work - Saussure himself did not have the goal of publishing a book, and a huge part in its structure and content was introduced by the above-named publishers.
So, the semiology created by Saussure is interpreted by him as a scientific direction that studies the life of signs within the framework of the life of society, and has the main task of revealing the meaning of signs and the laws that govern them. According to him, semiology should be classified as a part, and what place it occupies in it should be determined by the psychologist. The linguist, on the other hand, must find out how language is distinguished into an independent system in the complex of phenomena of semiology. Given that language is one of the sign systems, linguistics can be called a component of semiology. And the place of linguistics among other disciplines is determined precisely by its connection with semiology.
One of the basic ideas of the "Course of General Linguistics" is the difference between speech and language in speech activity. According to Saussure, when we distinguish between language and speech, we separate:
- Social and individual
- essential and incidental
Language is a function, a product that is passively registered by it and does not require preliminary reflection, and analysis appears in it only when classifying activity begins.
Speech is an individual act of will and understanding, which contains, first of all, certain combinations through which the speaking person uses the language code, and, secondly, a special mechanism of a psychophysical nature that allows a person to make the combinations used objective.
Speech activity is distinguished by a heterogeneous character; language, on the other hand, is a phenomenon homogeneous in nature - a system of signs, where the only important thing can be called the process in which the meaning is combined with the acoustic image.
Saussure argues that speech activity consists of three components:
- Physical component (propagation of sound vibrations)
- Physiological component (movement from hearing organs to acoustic images or from acoustic images to speech organs)
- The mental component (acoustic images are a mental reality that does not coincide with the sound; there is a certain idea about the physical sound; there are concepts)
Despite the fact that language cannot exist outside of human speech activity (it is not an organism that exists independently, it does not have its own individual birth, life and death), the study of speech activity should begin precisely with the study of language, which is the basis of any speech phenomena. activities. And linguistics in the full sense of the word is the linguistics of language.
Language sign, language units, significance
Ferdinand de Saussure introduces several concepts:
- language sign
- Language units
- Significance
A linguistic sign is formed by two components: an acoustic image (signifier) and a concept (signified). It also has two main properties, the first of which is the arbitrariness of the connection between the two above-mentioned components, i.e. that there is no internal and natural connection between them. And the second is that the acoustic image is characterized by extension in time, in other words, in one dimension.
Language consists of linguistic entities - signs that reflect the unity of the acoustic image and concept. And linguistic units are linguistic entities separated from each other. They can only be revealed through concepts, because the acoustic image is indivisible, which means that one sound unit corresponds to one linguistic concept. Language units, proceeding from this, are segments of precisely mental sounding, which mean certain concepts.
Among other things, language is also a system of meanings. Considering that meaning is signified for the signifier, the significance of signs is produced from their interaction with other linguistic signs. If, for example, a language is compared to a sheet of paper, then the meaning will be correlated with the interaction of the front and back sides of this sheet; significance, in turn, will be correlated in the interaction of several sheets with each other.
And the concepts and acoustic images that make up the language are purely differential significances, in other words, the content cannot determine them positively, but their relation to other components of the language system determines them negatively. There are no positive elements in the language that could exist regardless of the language system. There are only sound and semantic differences. Saussure says that what characterizes the difference of one sign from others is all that makes it up. A language system is a set of sound differences associated with a set of conceptual differences. And only the facts of combinations of signified and signifying data can be positive.
As for the significances, there are two types of them, the main of which are two types of relations and differences between the elements of the language system. These are:
- Relations are syntagmatic
- Associative relations
Syntagmatic relations are relations between language units that follow each other in the speech stream, in other words, relations within the totality of language units that exist in the temporal dimension. It is these combinations that are called syntagmas.
Associative relations are relations that exist outside the speech process and outside of time. Such are the relations of generality - the similarity of units of the language in sound and meaning, or only in meaning or only in sound in some respect.
Diachronic and synchronic linguistics
In addition to all of the above, it is important to note that among the main provisions of the “Course of General Linguistics”, an important place is given to distinguishing between two types of linguistics:
- Diachronic linguistics (historical and comparative)
- Synchronic linguistics (descriptive)
According to Saussure, linguistic research can only be relevant to its subject if it takes into account both linguistic aspects: diachronic and synchronic.
Diachronic research must be based on accurately executed synchronic descriptions. It is impossible to study the changes that occur in the process of the historical development of a language unless a careful synchronous analysis of the language is carried out at each specific stage of its evolution. Comparing two different languages is possible only and only when a detailed synchronous analysis of both is taken as a basis.
Conclusion
The linguistic ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure caused a revision of the classical methods of linguistics and served as a theoretical foundation for innovative structural linguistics. Saussure was able to lay the foundations of semiology at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, and Saussure's approach, which went beyond the framework of linguistic science in general, became the basis of structuralism, which, in turn, became the most significant trend in the humanitarian thought of the last century. In addition, Ferdinand de Saussure became a pioneer of the sociological school in linguistics and managed to nurture, over the two decades that he taught at the University of Geneva, many talented students who later became outstanding linguists.