Swiss - Educator | November 26, 1857 - February 22, 1913
A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.
Ferdinand de Saussure
IdeasDifferencesSoundSystem
Henceforth, language studies were no longer directed merely towards correcting grammar.
LanguageGrammarLongerWereMerely
Any psychology of sign systems will be part of social psychology - that is to say, will be exclusively social; it will involve the same psychology as is applicable in the case of languages.
SayWillSamePsychologySocial
It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and how language lives, carries on and changes over time.
TimeLanguageOthersChangesSee
Everyone, left to his own devices, forms an idea about what goes on in language which is very far from the truth.
TruthLanguageEveryoneOwnLeft
Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another.
LanguageWillRationalLawsGeneral
Within speech, words are subject to a kind of relation that is independent of the first and based on their linkage: these are syntagmatic relations, of which I have spoken.
CommunicationWordsSpeechKind
A language presupposes that all the individual users possess the organs.
LanguageIndividualOrgansUsers
In fact, from then on scholars engaged in a kind of game of comparing different Indo-European languages with one another, and eventually they could not fail to wonder what exactly these connections showed, and how they should be interpreted in concrete terms.
GameConnectionsWonderKindFail
In general, the philological movement opened up countless sources relevant to linguistic issues, treating them in quite a different spirit from traditional grammar; for instance, the study of inscriptions and their language. But not yet in the spirit of linguistics.
LanguageSpiritGrammarMovementUp
It is one of the aims of linguistics to define itself, to recognise what belongs within its domain. In those cases where it relies upon psychology, it will do so indirectly, remaining independent.
IndependentWillPsychologyWithin
It is only since linguistics has become more aware of its object of study, i.e. perceives the whole extent of it, that it is evident that this science can make a contribution to a range of studies that will be of interest to almost anyone.
ScienceWillContributionBecome
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