Select an idea that resonated most with you and offer a very brief summary. Your own example from societal and cultural pra

Course in General Linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure

Edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye In collaboration with Albert Riedlinger

Translated, with an introduction and notes by Wade Baskin

m S9(6)

McGraw-Hill Book Company New York Toronto London

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

phonetic changes, for example, includes things that have been said before, and perhaps more definitively; but, aside from the fact that this part contains many valuable and original details, even a superficial reading will show to what extent its omission would detract from an understanding of the principles upon which F. de Saussure erects his system of static linguistics.

We are aware of our responsibility to our critics. We are also aware of our responsibility to the author, who probably would not have authorized the publication of these pages.

This responsibility we accept wholly, and we would willingly bear it alone. Will the critics be able to distinguish between the teacher and his interpreters? We would be grateful to them if they would direct toward us the blows which it would be unjust to heap upon one whose memory is dear to us.

Geneva, July 1915.

Charles Bally, Albert Sechehaye

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The second edition is essentially the same as the first. The editors have made some slight changes designed to facilitate reading and clarify certain points.

Ch. B. Alb. S.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

With the exception of a few minute corrections, this edition is the same as the preceding.

Ch. B. Alb. S.

I NTRODUCTION

Chapter I

A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS

The science that has been developed around the facts of language passed through three stages before finding its true and unique object.

First something called "grammar" was studied. This study, in- itiated by the Greeks and continued mainly by the French, was based on logic. It lacked a scientific approach and was detached from language itself. Its only aim was to give rules for distinguish- ing between correct and incorrect forms; it was a normative dis- cipline, far removed from actual observation, and its scope was limited.

Next appeared philology. A "philological" school had existed much earlier in Alexandria, but this name is more often applied to the scientific movement which was started by Friedrich August Wolf in 1777 and which continues to this day. Language is not its sole object. The early philologists sought especially to correct, interpret and comment upon written texts. Their studies also led to an interest in literary history, customs, institutions, etc.' They applied the methods of criticism for their own purposes. When they dealt with linguistic questions, it was for the express purpose of comparing texts of different periods, determining the language peculiar to each author, or deciphering and explaining inscriptions made in an archaic or obscure language. Doubtless these investi- gations broke the ground for historical linguistics. Ritschl's studies of Plautus are actually linguistic. But philological criticism is still deficient on one point: it follows the written language too slavishly

i At the risk of offending some readers, certain stylistic characteristics of the original French are retained. [Tr.] (The bracketed abbreviations S., Ed. and Tr. indicate whether footnotes are to be attributed to De Saussure, to the editors of the Cours de linguistique generate, or to the translator.)

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and neglects the living language. Moreover, it is concerned with little except Greek and Latin antiquity.

The third stage began when scholars discovered that languages can be compared with one another. This discovery was the origin of "comparative rhilology." In 1816, in a work entitled (1ber das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache, Franz Bopp compared Sanskrit with German, Greek, Latin, etc. Bopp was not the first to record their simi larities and state that all these languages belong to a single family. That had been done before him, notably by,the English orientalist W. Jones (died in 1794) ; but Jones' few isolated statements do not prove that the significance and importance of comparison had been generally understood before 1816. While Bopp cannot be credited with the discovery that Sanskrit is re- lated to certain languages of Europe and Asia, he did realize that the comparison of related languages could become the subject matter of an independent science. To illuminate one language by means of another, to explain the forms of one through the forms of the other, that is what no one had done before him.

Whether Bopp could have created his science-so quickly at least-without the prior discovery of Sanskrit is doubtful. With Sanskrit as a third witness beside Latin and Greek, Bopp had a larger and firmer basis for his studies. Fortunately, Sanskrit was exceptionally well-fitted to the role of illuminating the comparison.

For example, a comparison of the paradigms of Latin genus (genus, generic, genere, genera, generum, etc.) and Greek (g&nos, geneos, genei, genea, genoon, etc.) reveals nothing. But the picture changes as soon as we add the corresponding Sanskrit series (danas, ¢anasas, 1anasi, ¢anasu, #anasam, etc.). A glance reveals the simi- larity between the Greek forms and the Latin forms. If we ac- cept tentatively the hypothesis that §anal represents the primi- tive state-and this step facilitates explanation-then we conclude that s must have fallen in Greek forms wherever it occurred be- tween two vowels. Next we conclude that s became r in Latin under the same conditions. Grammatically, then, the Sanskrit paradigm exemplifies the concept of radical, a unit (fans) that is quite definite and stable. Latin and Greek had the same forms as San- skrit only in their earlier stages. Here Sanskrit is instructive pre- cisely because it has preserved all the Indo-European s's. Of course

A GLANCE AT TEL HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS

3

Sanskrit failed in other respects to preserve the features of the prototype; for instance, it had completely revolutionized the vo- calic system. But in general the original elements that Sanskrit has preserved are remarkably helpful in research-and fate decreed that it was to clarify many points in the study of other languages.

Other distinguished linguists soon added to the contribution of Bopp: Jacob Grimm, the founder of Germanic studies (his Deutsche Grammatik was published from 1822 to 1836) ; Pott, whose etymo- logical studies made a considerable amount of material available to linguists; Kuhn, whose works dealt with both linguistics and comparative mythology; the Indic scholars Benfey and Aufrecht, etc.

Finally, among the last representatives of the school, Max Milller, G. Curtius, and August Schleicher deserve special atten- tion. In different ways, all three did much to advance comparative studies.. Max Miiller popularized them in his brilliant discussions (Lessons in the Science of Language, 1861) ; but his failing was a certain lack of conscientiousness. Curtius, a distinguished philol- ogist known especially for hisGrundziige der griechischen Etymologie (1879), was one of the first to reconcile comparative philology with classical philology. The latter had watched the progress of the new science suspiciously, and each school had mistrusted the other. Schleicher was the first to try to codify the results of piecemeal investigations. His Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (1861-62) is more or less a systemiza- tion of the science founded by Bopp. His book, with its long record

of service, recalls better than any other the broad outlines of the comparative school, which is the first chapter in the history of Indo-European linguistics.

But the comparative school, which had the indisputable merit of opening up a new and fruitful field, did not succeed in setting up the true science of linguistics. It failed to seek out the nature of its object of study. Obviously, without this elementary step, no science can develop a method.

The first mistake of the comparative philologists was also the source of all their other mistakes. In their investigations (which em- braced only the Indo-European languages), they never asked them- selves the meaning of their comparisons or the significance of the

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relations that they discovered. Their method was exclusively com- parative, not historical. Of course comparison is required for any historical reconstruction, but by itself it cannot be conclusive. And the conclusion was all the more elusive whenever the comparative philologists looked upon the development of two languages as a naturalist might look upon the growth of two plants. For example Schleicher, who always invites us to start from Proto-Indo-Euro- pean and thus seems in a sense to be a confirmed historian, has no hesitancy in saying that Greek e and o are two grades (Stufen) of the vocalic system. This is because Sanskrit has a system of vocalic alternations that suggests the notion of grades. Schleicher supposed that each language has to pass through those grades separately and in exactly the same way, just as plants of the same species pass through the same developmental stages independently of one another, and saw a reinforced grade of e in Greek o and a reinforced grade of d in Sanskrit a. The fact is that a Proto-Indo-European alternation was reflected differently in Greek and in Sanskrit with- out there being any necessary equivalence between the gram- matical effects produced in either language (see pp. 158 ff.).

The exclusively comparative method brought in a set of false notions. Having no basis in reality, these notions simply could not reflect the facts of speech. Language was considered a specific sphere, a fourth natural kingdom; this led to methods of reasoning which would have caused astonishment in other sciences. Today one cannot read a dozen lines written at that time without being struck by absurdities of reasoning and by the terminology used to justify these absurdities.

But from the viewpoint of methodology, the mistakes of the comparative philologists are not without value; the mistakes of an infant science give a magnified picture of those made by anyone in the first stages of scientific research, and I shall have occasion to point out several of them in the course of this exposition.

Not until around 1870 did scholars begin to seek out the prin- ciples that govern the life of languages. Then they began to see that similarities between languages are only one side of the lin- guistic phenomenon, that comparison is only a means or method of reconstructing the facts.

Linguistics proper, which puts comparative studies in their

A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS

5

proper place, owes its origin to the study of the Romance and Germanic languages. Romance studies, begun by Diez-his Gram- matik der romanischen Sprachen dates from 1836-38-were in- strumental in bringing linguistics nearer to its true object. For Romance scholars enjoyed privileged conditions that were un- known to Indo-European scholars. They had direct access to Latin, the prototype of the Romance languages, and an abundance of texts allowed them to trace in detail the evolution of the different dialects; these two circumstances narrowed the field of conjecture and provided a remarkably solid frame for all their research. Germanic scholars were in a similar situation. Though they could not study the prototype directly, numerous texts enabled them to trace the history of the languages derived from Proto-Germanic through the course of many centuries. The Germanic scholars, coming to closer grips with reality than had the first Indo-Euro- pean scholars, reached different conclusions.

A first impetus was given by the American scholar Whitney, the author of Life and Growth of Language (1875). Shortly afterwards a new school was formed by the neogrammarians (Junggram- matiker), whose leaders were all Germans: K. Brugmann and H. Osthoff; the Germanic scholars W. Braune, E. Sievers, H. Paul; the Slavic scholar Leskien, etc. Their contribution was in placing the results of comparative studies in their historical perspective and thus linking the facts in their natural order. Thanks to them, language is no longer looked upon as an organism that develops independently but as a product of the collective mind of linguistic groups. At the same time scholars realized how erroneous and in- sufficient were the notions of philology and comparative philology.' Still, in spite of the services that they rendered, the neogram- marians did not illuminate the whole question, and the funda- mental problems of general linguistics still await solution.

2 The new school, using a more realistic approach than had its predecessor, fought the terminology of the comparative school, and especially the illogical metaphors that it used. One no longer dared to say, "Language does this or that," .or "life of language," etc. since language is not an entity and exists only within speakers. One must not go too far, however, and a compromise is in order. Certain metaphors are indispensable. To require that only words that correspond to the facts of speech be used is to pretend that these facts no longer perplex us. This is by no means true, and in some instances I shall not hesitate to use one of the expressions condemned at that time. [S.]

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Chapter II

SUBJECT MATTER AND SCOPE OF LINGUISTICS; ITS RELATIONS WITH OTHER SCIENCES

The subject matter of linguistics comprises all manifestations of human speech, whether that of savages or civilized nations, or of archaic, classical or decadent periods. In each period the linguist must consider not only correct speech and flowery language, but all other forms of expression as well. And that is not all: since he is often unable to observe speech directly, he must consider written texts, for only through them can he reach idioms that are remote in time or space.

The scope of linguistics should be: a) to describe and trace the history of all observable languages,

which amounts to tracing the history of families of languages and reconstructing as far as possible the mother language of each family;

b) to determine the forces that are permanently and universally at work in all languages, and to deduce the general laws to which all specific historical phenomena can be reduced; and

c) to delimit and define itself. Linguistics is very closely related to other sciences that some-

times borrow from its data, sometimes supply it with data. The lines of demarcation do not always show up clearly. For instance, linguistics must be carefully distinguished from ethnography and prehistory, where language is used merely to document. It must also be set apart from anthropology, which studies man solely from the viewpoint of his species, for language is a social fact. But must linguistics then be combined with sociology? What are the relation- ships between linguistics and social psychology? Everything in language is basically psychological, including its material and mechanical manifestations, such as sound changes; and since lin- guistics provides social psychology with such valuable data, is it

THE OBJECT OF LINGUISTICS

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not part and parcel of this discipline? Here I shall raise many sim- ilar questions; later I shall treat them at greater length.

The ties between linguistics and the physiology of sounds are less difficult to untangle. The relation is unilateral in the sense that the study of languages exacts clarifications from the science of the physiology of sounds but furnishes none in return. In any event, the two disciplines cannot be confused. The thing that constitutes language is, as I shall show later, unrelated to the phonic character of the linguistic sign.

As for philology, we have already drawn the line: it is distinct from linguistics despite points of contact between the two sciences and mutual services that they render.

Finally, of what use is linguistics? Very few people have clear ideas on this point, and this is not the place to specify them. But it is evident, for instance, that linguistic questions interest all who work with texts-historians, philologists, etc. Still more obvious is the importance of linguistics to general culture : in the lives of individuals and societies, speech is more important than anything else. That linguistics should continue to be the prerogative of a few specialists would be unthinkable-everyone is concerned with it in one way or another. But-and this is a paradoxical consequence of the interest that is fixed on linguistics-there is no other field in which so many absurd notions, prejudices, mirages, and fictions have sprung up. From the psychological viewpoint these errors are of interest, but the task of the linguist is, above all else, to condemn them and to dispel them as best he can.

Chapter III

THE OBJECT OF LINGUISTICS

1. Definition of Language What is both the integral and concrete object of linguistics? The

question is especially difficult; later we shall see why; here I wish merely to point up the difficulty.

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Other sciences work with objects that are given in advance and that can then be considered from different viewpoints; but not linguistics. Someone pronounces the French word nu `bare': a superficial observer would be tempted to call the word a concrete linguistic object; but a more careful examination would reveal successively three or four quite different things, depending on whether the word is considered as a sound, as the expression of an idea, as the equivalent of Latin nudum, etc. Far from it being the object that antedates the viewpoint, it would seem that it is the viewpoint that creates the object; besides, nothing tells us in advance that one way of considering the fact in question takes precedence over the others or is in any way superior to them.

Moreover, regardless of the viewpoint that we adopt, the lin- guistic phenomenon always has two related sides, each deriving its values from the other. For example:

1) Articulated syllables are acoustical impressions perceived by the ear, but the sounds would not exist without the vocal organs; an n, for example, exists only by virtue of the relation between the two sides. We simply cannot reduce language to sound or detach sound from oral articulation; reciprocally, we cannot define the movements of the vocal organs without taking into account the acoustical impression (see pp. 38 ff.).

2) But suppose that sound were a simple thing: would it consti- tute speech? No, it is only the instrument of thought; by itself, it has no existence. At this point a new and redoubtable relationship arises: a sound, a complex acoustical-vocal unit, combines in turn with an idea to form a complex physiological-psychological unit. But that is still not the complete picture.

3) Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we can- not conceive of one without the other. Besides:

4) Speech always implies both an established system and an evolution; at every moment it is an existing institution and a product of the past. To distinguish between the system and its history, between what it is and what it was, seems very simple at first glance; actually the two things are so closely related that we can scarcely keep them apart. Would we simplify the question by studying the linguistic phenomenon in its earliest stages-if we

THE OBJECT OF LINGUISTICS

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began, for example, by studying the speech of children? No, for in dealing with speech, it is completely misleading to assume that the problem of early characteristics differs from the problem of per- manent characteristics. We are left inside the vicious circle.

From whatever direction we approach the question, nowhere do we find the integral object of linguistics. Everywhere we are con- fronted with a dilemma: if we fix our attention on only one side of each problem, we run the risk of failing to perceive the dualities pointed out above; on the other hand, if we study speech from several viewpoints simultaneously, the object of linguistics appears to us as a confused mass of heterogeneous and unrelated things. Either procedure opens the door to several sciences-psychology, anthropology, normative grammar, philology, etc.which are distinct from linguistics, but which might claim speech, in view of the faulty method of linguistics, as one of their objects.

As I see it there is only one solution to all the foregoing diffi- culties: from the very outset we must put both feet on the ground of language and use language as the norm of all other manifestations of speech. Actually, among so many dualities, language alone seems to lend itself to independent definition and provide a fulcrum that satisfies the mind.

But what is language [langue]? It is not to be confused with human speech [langage], of which it is only a definite part, though certainly an essential one. It is both a social product of the faculty of speech and a collection of necessary conventions that have been adopted by a social body to permit individuals to exercise that faculty. Taken as a whole, speech is many-sided and heterogene- ous; straddling several areas simultaneously-physical, physio- logical, and psychological-it belongs both to the individual and to society; we cannot put it into any category of human facts, for we cannot discover its unity.

Language, on the contrary, is a self-contained whole and a prin- ciple of classification. As soon as we give language first place among the facts of speech, we introduce a natural order into a mass that lends itself to no other classification.

One might object to that principle of classification on the ground that since the use of speech is based on a natural faculty whereas

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language is something acquired and conventional, language should not take first place but should be subordinated to the natural instinct.

That objection is easily refuted. First, no one has proved that speech, as it manifests itself when

we speak, is entirely natural, i.e. that our vocal apparatus was designed for speaking just as our legs were designed for walking. Linguists are far from agreement on this point. For instance Whit- ney, to whom language is one of several social institutions, thinks that we use the vocal apparatus as the instrument of language purely through luck, for the sake of convenience: men might just as well have chosen gestures and used visual symbols instead of acoustical symbols. Doubtless his thesis is too dogmatic; language is not similar in all respects to other social institutions (see p. 73 f. and p. 75 f.); moreover, Whitney goes too far in saying that our choice happened to fall on the vocal organs; the choice was more or less imposed by nature. But on the essential point the American linguist is right: language is a convention, and the nature of the sign that is agreed upon does not matter. The question of the vocal apparatus obviously takes a secondary place in the problem of speech.

One definition of articulated speech might confirm that conclusion. In Latin, articulue means a member, part, or subdivision of a sequence; applied to speech, articulation designates either the sub- division of a spoken chain into syllables or the subdivision of the chain of meanings into significant units; gegliederte Sprache is used in the second sense in German. Using the second definition, we can say that what is natural to mankind is not oral speech but the faculty of constructing a language, i.e. a system of distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas.

Broca discovered that the faculty of speech is localized in the third left frontal convolution; his discovery has been used to sub- stantiate the attribution of a natural quality to speech. But we know that the same part of the brain is the center of everything that has to do with speech, including writing. The preceding statements, together with observations that have been made in different cases of aphasia resulting from lesion of the centers of localization, seem to indicate: (1) that the various disorders of oral speech are bound

THE OBJECT OF LINGUISTICS

11

up in a hundred ways with those of written speech; and (2) that what is lost in all cases of aphasia or agraphia is less the faculty of producing a given sound or writing a given sign than the ability to evoke by means of an instrument, regardless of what it is, the signs of a regular system of speech. The obvious implication is that beyond the functioning of the various organs there exists a more general faculty which governs signs and which would be the linguistic faculty proper. And this brings us to the same conclusion as above.

To give language first place in the study of speech, we can ad- vance a final argument: the faculty of articulating words-whether it is natural or not-is exercised only with the help of the instru- ment created by a collectivity and provided for its use; therefore, to say that language gives unity to speech is not fanciful.

2. Place of Language in the Facts of Speech In order to separate from the whole of speech the part that be-

longs to language, we must examine the individual act from which the speaking-circuit can be reconstructed. The act requires the presence of at least two persons; that is the minimum number necessary to complete the circuit. Suppose that two people, A and B, are conversing with each other:

Suppose that the opening of the circuit is in A's brain, where mental facts (concepts) are associated with representations of the linguistic sounds (sound-images) that are used for their expression. A given concept unlocks a corresponding sound-image in the brain; this purely psychological phenomenon is followed in turn by a physiological process : the brain transmits an impulse corresponding

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to the image to the organs used in producing sounds. Then the sound waves travel from the mouth of A to the ear of B: a purely physical process. Next, the circuit continues in B, but the order is reversed: from the ear to the brain, the physiological transmission of the sound-image; in the brain, the psychological association of the image with the corresponding concept. If B then speaks, the new act will follow-from his brain to A's-exactly the same course as the first act and pass through the same successive phases, which I shall diagram as follows:

Audition

Phonation

Phonation

Audition

The preceding analysis does not purport to be complete. We might also single out the pure acoustical sensation, the identifi- cation of that sensation with the latent sound-image, the muscular image of phonation, etc. I have included only the elements thought to be essential, but the drawing brings out at a glance the distinc- tion between the physical (sound waves), physiological (phonation and audition), and psychological parts (word-images and con- cepts). Indeed, we should not fail to note that the word-image stands apart from the sound itself and that it is just as psycho- logical as the concept which is associated with it.

The circuit that I have outlined can be further divided into: a) an outer part that includes the vibrations of the sounds which

travel from the mouth to the ear, and an inner part that includes everything else;

b) a psychological and a nonpsychological part, the second in- cluding the physiological productions of the vocal organs as well as the physical facts that are outside the individual;

THE OBJECT OF LINGUISTICS

13

c) an active and a passive part: everything that goes from the associative center of the speaker to the ear of the listener is active, and everything that goes from the ear of the listener to his associ- ative center is passive;

d) finally, everything that is active in the psychological part of the circuit is executive (c –+ s), and everything that is passive is receptive (s –* c).

We should also add the associative and co-ordinating faculty that we find as soon as we leave isolated signs; this faculty plays the dominant role in the organization of language as a system (see pp. 122 ff.).

But to understand clearly the role of the associative and co- ordinating faculty, we must leave the, individual act, which is only the embryo of speech, and approach the social fact.

Among all the individuals that are linked together by speech, some sort of average will be set up : all will reproduce-not exactly of course, but approximately-the same signs united with the same concepts.

How does the social crystallization of language come about? Which parts of the circuit are involved? For all parts probably do not participate equally in it.

The nonpsychological part can be rejected from the outset. When we hear people speaking a language that we do not know, we perceive the sounds but remain outside the social fact because we do not understand them.

Neither is the psychological part of the circuit wholly respon- sible: the executive side is missing, for execution is never-carried out by the collectivity. Execution is always individual, and the individual is always its master: I shall call the executive side speaking [parole].

Through the functioning of the receptive and co-ordinating faculties, impressions that are perceptibly the same for all are made on the minds of speakers. How can that social product be pictured in such a way that language will stand apart from everything else? If we could embrace the sum of word-images stored in the minds of all individuals, we could identify the social bond that consti- tutes language. It is a storehouse filled by the members of a given community through their active use of speaking, a grammatical

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system that has a potential existence in each brain, or, more specifically, in the brains of a group of individuals. For language is not complete in any speaker; it exists perfectly only within a collectivity.

In separating language from speaking we are at the same time separating: (1) what is social from what is individual; and (2) what }§ essential from what is accessory and more or less accidental.

Language is not a function of the speaker; it is a product that is passively assimilated by the individual. It never requires premedi- tation, and reflection enters in only for the purpose of classification, which we shall take up later (pp. 122 ff.).

Speaking, on the contrary, is an individual act. It is wilful and intellectual. Within the act, we should distinguish between: (1) the combinations by which the speaker uses the language code for expressing his own thought; and (2) the psychophysical mecha- nism that allows him to exteriorize those combinations.

Note that I have defined things rather than words; these defini- tions are not endangered by certain ambiguous words that do not have identical meanings in different languages. For instance, German Sprache means both "language" and "speech"; Rede almost corresponds to "speaking" but adds the special connotation of "discourse." Latin sermo designates both "speech" and "speak

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