Translator’s Introduction
N: The translator’s introduction is an important and integral part of the “Course in General Linguistic”. For a book dealing with linguistics, the translation itself must be scrutinized and dealt with in detail. The translator’s introduction provided an important perspective from the translator, which illuminates the nuances in the original text revealed during the translation process. It also summarizes the thought of Saussure in a very concise fashion.
(F41)
Q: It is a key text not only within the development of linguistics but also in the formation of that broader intellectual movement of the twentieth century known as ‘structuralism’.
Q: With the sole exception of Wittgenstein, no thinker has had as profound an influence on the modern view of homo loquens as Saussure.
N: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951), student of Bertrand Russell, author of Philosophical Investigation (To be read). Proposer of Language-game theory. Key Idea: Meaning is use.
N: homo loquens: the talking man, as oppose to homo sapiens, the wise man. The term is coined in 1772. J.G. Herder.
Q: For instead of men’s words being seen as peripheral to men’s understanding of reality, men’s understanding of reality came to be seen as revolving about their social use of verbal signs.
Q: Words are not vocal labels which have come to be attached to things and qualities already given in advance by Nature, or to ideas already grasped independently by the human mind. On the contrary languages themselves, collective products of social interaction, supply the essential conceptual frameworks for men’s analysis of reality and simultaneously, the verbal equipment for their description of it. The concepts we use are creations of the language we speak.
Q: For the founder of modern linguistics at the same time founded semiology, the general science of signs, within which linguistics was to be one special branch.
(F42)
Q: He rejected the possibility of an all-embracing science of language, which would deal simultaneously with physiological, sociological, philosophical and psychological aspects of the subject. Instead, he proposed to cut through the perplexing maze of existing approaches to the study of linguistic phenomena by setting up a unified discipline, based upon a single, clearly defined concept: that of the linguistic sign.
Q: … it can be identified only by contrast with coexisting signs of the same nature, which together constitute a structured system.
Q: to drawing a radical distinction between diachronic (or evolutionary) linguistics and synchronic (or static) linguistics, and giving priority to the latter.
N: diachronic should be understood as “over the time”, and synchronic should be understood as “of the same time”. To call synchronic “static” is misleading.
N: Philology: The branch of knowledge dealing with structure, historical development and relationships of a language or languages.
(F43)
Q: The explanations philological historians provided were in the final analysis simple appeals to the past. They did not – and could not – offer any analysis of what a language is from the viewpoint of its current speakers. Whereas for Saussure it was only by adopting the users’ point of view that a language could be seen to be a coherently organised structure, amenable to scientific study. For linguistic signs, Saussure insisted, do not exist independently of the complex system of contrasts implicitly recognised in the day-to-day vocal interactions of a given community of speakers.
N: In simple terms, how a language was used in the past only provided an anthropological evidence to the current form of the language. These anthropological evidences usually are largely determined by how the words of the language was used throughout time, but does not give the any indication to the underlying logic beneath the language. It is often only lexical. But lexical study doesn’t form a holistic linguistic study. Linguistic study, which includes the structure of a language, is only possible by synchronic study, I.e. by studying the relation of syntax and lexicon used at the same time.
N: ‘signifiants’ (translated as signals, or signifier), ‘signifie’ (translated as signification or signified) are the dual entity proposed by Saussure to explain the nature of a sign. In simple terms, a “sign” must necessary be formed by two facets: the idea (signifie, signified) of the sign, and the outward form of expression (signifiants, signifier) of the sign. The signified is the abstraction of a concrete object or phenomenon in the material world, while the signifier is the concrete expression of that abstraction via sound or image, thus making a “sign” an abstraction device which connects material objects with physical expression, which explain the primary function of language.
Q: A language (langue) is for Saussure this whole system which alone makes it possible to identify the describe constituent parts: it is not a whole fortuitously built up out of parts already existing in their own right. Linguistic signs are therefore not like individual bricks, put together in a certain way to form an architectural structure. Unlike bricks, they are not separate self-contained units. Except as parts of the total structure, they do not even exist, any more than the circumference or the radii of a circle exist without the circle.
N: If linguistic signs are not the components of a language, merely its property like this paragraph suggests, then what is the component of a language? What provides the substance on which a language is built upon? I propose that the building blocks of a language is the common experience that is shared by the users of the language, which is expressed as linguistic signs.
(F44 to F48)
N: In these pages, the translator gave the brief account of the history of “Course in General Linguistic” and detailed the issues faced with translating the original text. Although “Course in General Linguistic” was put together by Saussure’s colleagues posthumously based on course notes taken by his students, the translator argues that it should capture the essence of Saussure’s thought. Also, despite any objection, the “Course” is widely studies in the linguistic field and thus achieve influence that cannot “retrospectively be denied to it”, despite inconsistencies that is presence in the “Course” and the original manuscripts of Saussure. The translator went on to point out how callous translations have caused Saussure’s thought to be misunderstood by linguists of the English-speaking scholars. The translator also pointed out several terms which might caused misunderstanding or rather obstruct the understanding of Saussure’s thought when reading the “Course”.
N: What is ‘image acoustique’? The translator’s explanation is “sound pattern”. My own understanding is something closer to “sounds which makes sense”.
N: langue seems to be used in different contexts which deserves special attention.
Preface to the First Edition
(F49 to F52)
N: In these pages, the editors, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye explained the approach taken (that of a reconstruction) in the production of the “Course”, and explain the rationale behind.
Introduction
Chapter 1: A Brief Survey of the History of Linguistics
(p1)
Q: First of all came what was called ‘grammar’. This discipline, first instituted by the Greeks and continued mainly by the French, is based on logic. It offers no scientific or objective approach to a language as such. Grammar aims solely at providing rules which distinguish between correct and incorrect forms. It is a prescriptive discipline, far removed from any concern with impartial observation, and its outlook is inevitably a narrow one.
N: Yet grammar remains influential and an important, if not the most important, component in second language teaching and learning. If this view of grammar is followed to its natural conclusion, one might question the place of grammar in second language teaching and learning, even if it’s necessary to learn “grammar” as it is.
Q: … the scientific movement inaugurated by Friedrich August Wolf in 1777… Philology seeks primarily to establish, interpret and comment upon texts. This main preoccupation leads to a concern with literary history, customs, institutions, etc… In all these areas, philology applies its own method, which is that of criticism… arise principally in the comparison of texts of different periods, in establishing the language characteristic of each writer…
N: It seems that Saussure’s contention against the philological approach is that it is overly concerned with the written language, and its diachronic studies and thus overlooking the “living language”. Another implied contention is that philology studies considered too many aspect which influence language without first establishing an object of study.
(P2)
Q: Th third phase… comparative philology, or ‘comparative grammar’, … the elucidation of one language by reference to a related language, explaining the forms of one by appeal to the forms of the other.
N: Saussure’s contention against the comparativist approach lies into their tendency to over-generalized everything as comparable. The evolution observed in a language is assumed to be present and parallel to a related language which results in a similar phenomenon. Which is not necessarily true, because the evolution of two languages is not always comparable and goes through the same phase.
Q: The mistakes a science makes in its initial stages present a magnified picture of the mistakes made by individuals starting out on scientific research.
N: The collective progress reflecting the individual progress? The value of learning is in avoiding mistakes made collectively in the past?
(P5)
Q: The achievement of the Neogrammarians was to place all the results of comparative philology in a historical perspective, so that linguistic facts were connected in their natural sequence. The Neogrammarians no longer looked upon a language as an organism developing of its own accord, but saw it as a product of the collective mind of a linguistic community.
N: To say that “language is a product of the collective mind of a linguistic community”, is to formulate the mind and the language as two separate entities. Rather, if we understand language and mind as two inseparable aspects of the same entity, and its dual nature as individual and collective, we should understand the phenomenon of language change as the collective evolution of language fueled by the collective usage of the language by a community of users. The logic of evolution is not inherent to the language itself, but in the usage and experience of the community.
Chapter II: Data and Aims of Linguistics: Connexions with Related Sciences
(P 6 to 7)
N: In these two pages, Saussure outline principles related to the Data and Aims of Linguistics inquiries. Of importance is the equality among all existing languages as data of Linguistics. No language should be considered superior or inferior when functioning as data of Linguistics because they are all “forms of expressions”. He also outline the relation between Linguistics and other sciences, and by differentiating Linguistics from other sciences, he also propose the primary aims of Linguistics as such:
(a)to describe all known languages and record their history. This involves tracing the history of language families and as far as possible, reconstructing the parent languages of each family;
(b)to determine the forces operating permanently and universally in all languages, and to formulate general laws which account for all particular linguistic phenomena historically attested;
(c)to delimit and define linguistics itself.
It seems to me that without a philosophical understanding of language itself, the above aim cannot be achieved. In other words, we need to answer the fundamental question of: What is language?
Q: …since the linguist is very often in no place to make his own linguistic observations at first hand…
N: This situation has changed with the emergence of the Internet.
Q: In the lives of individuals and of societies, language is a factor of greater importance than any other. For the study of language to remain solely the business of a handful of specialists would be a quite unacceptable state of affairs. In practice, the study of language is in some degree of other the concern of everyone. But a paradoxical consequence of this general interest is that no other subject has fostered more absurd notions, more prejudices, more illusions, or more fantasies.
Chapter III: The Object of study
(P8 – 9) Difficulties facing the study of language
N: In these two pages, the book outline the difficulties of defining the object of study for linguistic studies. In contrast to other sciences, for which the objects of study are “given in advance, then examined from different points of view”, the object of study for Linguistic is “not given in advance of the viewpoint”, rather. it is “the viewpoint adopted which creates the object”. Furthermore, there is nothing to tell us “in advance whether one of these ways of looking at it is prior to or superior to any of the others”. The book went on to illustrate the various complementing facets found in any linguistic phenomenon:
(1)that of the phonetic duality: what is spoken and what is heard form a phonetic unit.
(2)that of sound (or signifier) and meaning (or signified) duality present in a unit of word (sign).
(3)The individual and social duality of the language.
(4)The current institution (official established system) and historical evolution (the organic growth) duality.
Q: Would matters be simplified if one considered the ontogenesis of linguistic phenomena…
N: Ontogenesis: the development of a phenomenon from the earliest stage to maturity.
N: Some notes on the margin:
(1)Language is not the words
(2)All of these are the components of language
(3)Language is the expression of meaning, which only exist during social interaction.
(4)Language doesn’t requires a sound component, although it usually is present. Take for example the sign language.
What is the definition of linguistics?