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Ferdinand de Saussure Quotes

d. 1913 Switzerland

Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure (26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist and semiotician. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments both in linguistics and semiology in the 20th century.

Switzerland
Linguists

Also known as: Saussure, Ferdinand de

Random Ferdinand de Saussure quote

14 quotes

Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law.

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a shapeless and indistinct mass.

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

Language is a system in which all the parts can and should be considered from the viewpoint of their synchronic interrelatedness.

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other.

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

Writing obscures language ; it is not a guise for language but a disguise.

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

Language is a system whose parts can and must all be considered in their synchronic solidarity.

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

The linguistic entity is not accurately defined until it is delimited, i.e. separated from everything that surrounds it on the phonic chain. These delimited entities or units stand in opposition to each other in the mechanism of language.

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most important of all these systems.

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas; but the pairing of a certain number of acoustical signs with as many cuts made from the mass of thought engenders a system of values.

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

The scope of linguistics should be

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

The causes of continuity are a priori within the scope of the observer, but the causes of change in time are not. It is better not to attempt giving an exact account at this point, but to restrict discussion to the shifting of relationships in general. Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law.

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

Language can be compared to a sheet of paper: thought is its recto and sound its verso: one cannot cut the verso without simultaneously cutting the recto. Similarly, in the matter of language, one can separate neither sound from thought nor thought from sound; such separation could be achieved only by abstraction, which would lead either to pure psychology, or to pure phonology.

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

The aim of general synchronic linguistics is to set up the fundamental principles of any idiosynchronic system, the constituents of any language-state. Many of the items already explained in Part One belong rather to synchrony; for instance, the general properties of the sign are an integral part of synchrony although they were used to prove the necessity of separating the two linguistics.

Cours de linguistique générale (1916)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ferdinand de Saussure (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.