Talk:Ferdinand de Saussure

His entire name was Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.91.249.103 (talk) 22:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I thought it was Ferdinand Minge de Sassure? I was told that his middle name was actually referring to an obscure family relation, but was generally left out in modern publications due to semantic shift? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.205.24.53 (talk) 22:16, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Chomsky claims...

Chomsky tersely claims that, for Saussure, language is a "social product". Is there a simple answer to the question of what this might mean? This article and Structuralism are currently not of much help. --Ryguasu 02:20 Apr 3, 2003 (UTC)

This is absolutely true, and may be contrasted with Chomsky's claim that language is the exclusive product of the speaker's linguistic competence in the individual mind, or in other words, Chomsky's claim that language is a psychological product. For de Saussure, langue (the psychological ability to convert concepts to acoustic images, or for simplicity's sake, words) cannot exist without a kind of general agreement in a community as to what mental concept goes with what form of expression, and how those mental concepts are formulated linguistically. So, in comparision with Chomsky's exclusivly psychological "competence," de Saussure's "langue" includes both the psychological operations of expression, and the community's tacit agreement on how to express certain mental concepts. -- User: Joell

Would a person who lived his entire life in complete isolation use language? There would be no social need to do so. Chomsky might think that language is a brain function and operates regardless of whether there is anyone to hear the speech of a solitary person. The Chomskyan lonely guy walks around his deserted island talking to no one in particular, transmitting words when there are no receivers. If language, however, is a social product, as Saussure might say, then an asocial person would be silent, like an animal, because there is no sufficient reason to use language.Lestrade (talk) 00:37, 14 February 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

I'm fairly certain Chomsky would have in some manner dealt with that objection, since there are several real life instances where children brought up in isolation have exhibited an inability to learn or use language. However, I'm unfamiliar with Chomsky's work (past my suspicion that it's fairly thorough), and the critiques (from the structuralist/post-structuralist tradition) I have read attack his work on more fundamental grounds.

POV?

I don't know much about Saussure, but some of the statements here seem to smack of POV:

It is surprisingly poorly recognized that ...

and has since then been presupposed by all linguistic science, try as Chomsky might to disavow it.

Their lack of linguistic expertise (and subsequent misunderstanding of Saussure) and the inappropriate character of their objects of analysis led to theoretical difficulties, eventually causing proclamations of the "death" of structuralism in those disciplines. Unfortunately, this state of affairs persists.

On the last part, it seems that to say unequivocally that Barthes, Lacan, etc. misunderstood Saussure and that this was responsible for proclamations against structuralism would to be know their minds, which is POV unless very well substantiated. And at any rate, it is not Wikipedia's place to say that this misunderstanding is 'unfortunate'. --Saforrest 20:25, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Uh yeah. "Says who" and also "why did they say it". And the sniggering at Chomsky would be better replaced by his actual objections, or deleted. For Christ's sake. - Echeneida

At this point the article appears perfectly NPOV to me. Why isn't the warning removed?

Here is a note about possibly reconciling Saussure and Chomsky. My recollection is that Chomsky sees the fact that all languages are just that--language--implies that there is something they all must have in common. He sees the thing in common as the "deep structure" of all language. And furthermore, that deep structure is part of the human psychological heritage--that is, it's within the genome--and is the same for all people of all continents. Every language that exists builds, in some different way, on that deep structure. The reasons for their differences have to be looked at historically. I think Chomsky was interested in grammatical structures that languages have in common and was not inclined to look at matters of phonology or what words sound like from language to language. Wasn't Saussure very interested in phonology?

The point of contact between Chomsky's approach and Saussure's, I expect, would be the binary oppositions implicit in Chomsky's ideas of deep structure and those which Saussure saw as essential. It would take a linguist to really comment on this, though. --Aperey 17:12, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

So I'm responsible for the changes that led to dispute. Firstly, I'd like to concede that my changes did have too much POV. With respect to the particular points that Saforrest notes, however, consider the following.

1. I disagree that "It is surprisingly poorly recognized that..." expresses point of view, unless by that you mean merely that I haven't conducted a thorough, careful, well-sampled survey on the matter. My acquaintance with the literature, which is not small, and my discussions with friends in many different disciplines at many different universities who have all been supposedly taught 'structuralism', has aptly demonstrated, for me, that there is absolutely no widespread recognition of the deep (and not particularly esoteric!) theoretical relation between his philological work and his insights into general linguistics.

2. For those acquainted with the history of American grammatical theory, transformational grammar's (successful) attempt to distance itself from structuralism tends to cause sniggers or sad smiles. American linguistic theory was founded by Leonard Bloomfield's brilliant rewriting of the Cours. Neo-Bloomfielding structuralism was basically the only game in town. Zellig Harris, Chomsky's mentor, was right in the thick of it. He himself published several volumes on structural linguistics in which he pushed its formalist, purely distributional analyses, to their limits. It was his discovery of transformations, which appeared in a series of articles in the Bloomfieldian journal Language, that Chomsky seized upon (combining with Carnap's Logical Syntax) to make his extraordinary discoveries.

Saussurean distributional analysis *is* presupposed by any transformational theory insofar as a purely (at least, in theory) formalistic unitization of linguistic form, at ever increasing levels of abstraction, from lexicon up to constituent structure and the Sentence, by linear distribution of morphemes with respect to one another is the basis for *all* responsible linguistic theory to date. The only theories that don't model language so are reductionistic, in that they believe that there is no autonomous language as a system of relatively motivated distributions that does not reduce to cognitive, social, or stochastic mechanisms or principles. So I claim (without real expectation of dispute) that Chomsky and Saussure share: 1) a belief in an autonomous, abitrary, formal-distributional grammar (each generation of transformational theory being more rigorously formal than the one before) that is 2) separate from performance/parole.

The disavowal of Saussure was, on this basis, much more a career-building, political, or polemical move than a theoretical one. It had the function of aligning Chomsky with psychology and the hard sciences, against applied linguistics (language pedagogy had formed a significant part of the warrant for the birth of disciplinary linguistics in American), against the Europeans, against relativisms and with universalisms, and against the emerging (and increasingly disreputable) so-called structuralisms in non-linguistic domains. It did have theoretical consequences, too, of course, such as a turn from analyzing linguistic data to analyzing the consequences of unfoundable rule-formalisms. He laughably claims antecedents like Descartes, instead, focusing on his universalism and innatism. Plato, Descartes, Chomsky: the history of epistemology as Chomsky would like to see it? Anyway, the Chomskyian movement was, on the whole, successful, such that even its current detractors don't much understand what came before it (keep this in mind with respect to my last point, about 'unfortunate'-ness).

3. Finally, with regard to non-linguistic calques of structuralism, I think it is clearly wholly wrong to say I would need to know the minds of the various authors in order to say that they did not understand Saussure. Rather, if one understands what sort of entity Saussure claims language to be (and S isn't shy about telling you!) and then looks at the sorts of entities under description by, e.g. Levi-Strauss, Barthes, or the sort of inspired-by-the-words-S-used approach of Lacan (he doesn't even claim to be following Saussure), or Derrida's mere sleight-of-hand in On Grammatology, you immediately see that these other (post-)structuralisms have only a loose resemblance to Saussure's theory. Very briefly, simply, and incompletely, their objects do not follow either the first or the second principles of Saussure's description of langue: arbitrariness and linearity. Of course, how much the the collapse of extra-linguistic so-called structuralism into so-called post-structuralism (that has a unity only in *not* claiming descent from Saussure) has caused structuralism proper to fall into disrepute is hard to tell. Certainly there were other factors, such as the trends in disciplinary linguistics that I noted above, or American disciplinary philosophy's rejection of contemporary European thought, that I indeed should have mentioned. I say this forgetting of structuralism is "unfortunate" not because I really like structuralism (though I do) but because students learning the history of important 20th century thought today simply fail to comprehend the arguments of those who actually were familiar with structuralism when they are taught the caricatures that pass for it today, or, more likely, when they aren't taught structuralism at all. So I meant "a lack of historical knowledge affecting the thoroughness and understanding of contemporary scholarship," and, presuming we'd all find that unfortunate, called it so. Clearly, I shouldn't have done so.

I'm a little scared to re-edit the page now, and unsure if I ought to do so, since I'm pretty unclear on how to do a NPOV article, it seems. Anyway, I'm a lot happier with the page as it now stands than I was with it before I began. But I hope my discussion contribution was at least helpful. Any comments? --Adamzero

I think some of the reflections by Adamzero should go into the article. It would be a pity that the NPOV warning hinders him doing this as he seemingly knows a lot about the subject. Whoever put that NPOV warning in the article should step forward and help adding content to it. I propose to remove the NPOV warning for the time beeing. Hirzel 08:46, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I just find out that the NPOV warning was inserted by an anon (IP number 209.214.55.84) on the 29 May 2005. Later a large part of the article was deleted probably by the same user (IP numbers 209.214.55.92 and 209.214.55.92). In the change log the explanations "(Seriously)" and "(Not kidding)" are given. No further comment was inserted here in the talk page. I do not think that this is justification enough for this action so I revert to the version of May, 26th, 2005 to have a better base for further editing. Hirzel 09:05, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Adamzero's contributions do have value. One can learn a lot about Saussure from them. However, they also have some POV elements in them. Basically, the bits that Saforrest points out amount to not merely outlining a controversy over Saussure's work and legacy, but a declaration that one side is right and the other wrong. The NPOV thing to do is to write up what one believes to be true, based on background knowledge and a good-faith reading of source material, but also to acknowledge any controversy that exists and to fairly represent any opposing viewpoints (if space allows) and their popularity. Where an unresolved controversy exists, the article should not be made to take sides. In some cases, this is extremely easy. Rather than say "try as Chomsky might to disavow it," one could say "although this is disputed by Chomsky, among others." If Saussure's work is not seen by the majority of linguists as the origin of distributional analysis and thus a pillar of contemporary linguistics, then that needs to be known. "Many linguists disagree" - NPOV. "Many linguists disagree, but they are wrong" - POV. Since most of us are not linguists or critical theorists (including myself) it is especially incumbent on those of us who are to write responsibly and not misrepresent either consensus or controversy within the field. In the meantime, I'm editing those bits that I can actually tell are POV. --Skoosh 29 June 2005 05:55 (UTC)

Sorry if I sounded a little harsh. I don't want to frighten you off, Adamzero, especially since you seem to have valuable expertise that Wikipedia could greatly benefit from. Here's some guidance on how to achieve NPOV, if you're unsure how to go about it. --Skoosh 29 June 2005 06:24 (UTC)

Other Topics

According to our article on the Hittite Language, Ferdinand de Saussure announced in 1879, on theoretical grounds, that the Indo-European ancestral tongue contained a group of laryngeal sounds that did not occur in any known descendant tongue. This remained an interesting theoretical point for some thirty years, until the ancient language miscalled Hittite was deciphered and found to contain two of these sounds.

I think that de Saussure was also active in the auxiliary language (specifically Esperanto) movement, and himself proposed two separate modifications of Esperanto. Can anyone provide further information? J S Ayer 01:49, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Saussure's philosophical legacy isn't mentioned. Whilst he perhaps didn't always see his ideas in this context, they have influenced quite a few 20th century philosophers. --Nmcmurdo 01:12, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Saussure's relationship to Durkheim and Freud/Jung

Jonathan Culler, in his work on Saussure, says that Saussure was not familiar with Freud and Jung and that while it is has been theorized that Saussure was influenced by Durkheim there is no evidence for that apart from some similarities between their thoughts. This page claims otherwise. Anyone have any citations to back this page's claim about Saussure's relationship to those thinkers? Danielsilliman 22:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

The section on the Course

is grotesque. It seems to have been written by a "wackyj" who has clearly not read the Course, and it should be replaced in its entirety. If no-one else can get there first, I will write something in a month or two. In the meantime, perhaps the page should revert to a pre-wacky form.

as the successor to Joseph Wertheimer

Would somebody write about the eppisode of Joseph Wertheimer? (Timetable, german) --Sheynhertz_געשׁ״ך 15:03, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Quotes

Please put reference / source in quotes. Typewritten 14:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

And... err... are you sure you want to put Saussure in "Critical Theory"?? Typewritten 22:58, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Translation of title

Is there a specific reason, or is it an oversight, that the title of de Saussure's Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européenes has not also been stated in English in the article? Athænara ✉ 09:39, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Memoir on the Primitive System of Vowels in the Indo-European Languages found here and elsewhere. I have added it to the article. Æ. ✉ 22:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

What the...

Who are the idiots that are ok with copying the opening line ("Ferdinand de Saussure [...] was a Geneva-born Swiss linguist whose ideas laid the foundation for many of the significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century.") straight from Encyclopedia Britannica ("Swiss linguist whose ideas on structure in language laid the foundation for much of the approach to and progress of the linguistic sciences in the 20th century.") Sure, they are slightly different in content, but the syntax, structure, etc. are all intact from the original source. At the very best, this deserves a serious citation, and at the very worst, this deserves a total rewrite, one with a bit more content that isn't straight lifted from somewhere.--Blingice 02:21, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

To preempt the question "why don't you do it," the answer is that I have little to no knowledge of Saussure or linguistics, but I'm eager to begin a study soon. Perhaps I'll be able to up this article from Start-Class when I have a little more time.--Blingice 02:23, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Some culture

The "Cultural references" section has no value.Lestrade (talk) 00:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Changed an unencyclopedic sentence

Article said: "The impact of Saussure's ideas on the development of linguistic theory in the first half of the 20th century cannot be overstated."

Easily falsifiable ("Saussure directly caused every discovery in theoretical linguistics from 1900-1950"--there, I overstated it) and unencyclopedic. Changed to: "Saussure's ideas had a major impact on on the development of linguistic theory in the first half of the 20th century." 74.105.132.151 (talk) 02:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)