Ferdinand de Saussure Quotes
Ferdinand de Saussure Quotes
- 1
A language presupposes that all the individual users possess the organs.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 2
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.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 3
Before Latin, there is a period which Greek and Slavic share in common. So this involves the history of language families, as and when relevant.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 4
Everyone, left to his own devices, forms an idea about what goes on in language which is very far from the truth.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 5
In attempting to trace the history of a language, one will very soon find oneself obliged to trace the history of a language family.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 6
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.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 7
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.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 8
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.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 9
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.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 10
Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 11
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.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 12
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.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 13
The critical principle demanded an examination, for instance, of the contribution of different periods, thus to some extent embarking on historical linguistics.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 14
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.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 15
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.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
- 16
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.
Ferdinand-de-SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
