Swiss - Educator | November 26, 1857 - February 22, 1913
Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things.
Ferdinand de Saussure
SaidSignsThingsInstitutionsEvoke
Outside speech, the association that is made in the memory between words having something in common creates different groups, series, families, within which very diverse relations obtain but belonging to a single category: these are associative relations.
WordsMemorySpeechBelongingWithin
The business, task or object of the scientific study of languages will if possible be 1) to trace the history of all known languages. Naturally this is possible only to a very limited extent and for very few languages.
BusinessHistoryWillPossibleTask
The critical principle demanded an examination, for instance, of the contribution of different periods, thus to some extent embarking on historical linguistics.
ContributionHistoricalDifferent
The first of these phases is that of grammar, invented by the Greeks and carried on unchanged by the French. It never had any philosophical view of a language as such.
LanguageViewNeverGrammarFirst
The very special place that a language occupies among institutions is undeniable, but there is much more to be said-, a comparison would tend rather to bring out the differences.
LanguageDifferencesPlaceSaidMore
Whitney wanted to eradicate the idea that in the case of a language we are dealing with a natural faculty; in fact, social institutions stand opposed to natural institutions.
LanguageStandSocialNaturalIdea
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