Faculty of Education

Degree in English Language Teaching

Course material for Lecturer: Contact:
General Linguistics Week 11 1st Year - 2024 José Pires jpires@unilicungo.ac.mz

Unit III: History of Modern Linguistics – early history

Topic: 20th Century Linguistics – Ferdinand de Saussure

By the end of the lesson you are expected to distinguish the synchronic from the diachronic
approaches to language study.

The growth of modern linguistics, from the end of the 18th century to the present day, has in large
part already been summarised in earlier unit 1. When we talk about the twentieth-century
linguistics we must bear in mind the two main approaches to language study, European and
American. These two approaches to language study formed the modern subject of linguistics. The
first arises out of the aims and methods of 19thcentury comparative philology, with its focus on
written records, and its interest in historical analysis and interpretation (Crystal, 1987:407).

However,

"The beginning of the 20th century saw a sharp change of emphasis, with the study of the
principles governing the structureof living languages being introduced by the Genevan linguist,
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 - 1913). Saussure's early work was in philology, but he is mainly
remembered for his theoretical ideas as summarised in the Cours de linguistique generale
('Course in General Linguistics'), which is widely held to be the foundation of the modern
subject.

Saussurean Principles

Some of saussure's most central ideas were expressed in the form of pairs of concepts:

1
Diachrony vs Synchrony

Saussure distinguished the Diachronic approach as being historical and Synchronic approach as
being non-historical approach to language study.

The Diachronic or historucal approach sees language as a continually changing medium" (Crystal,
1987:407) and the Synchronic or nonhistorical approach sees language as existing as a state at
particular moment in time (Crystal, 1987:407).

In the diagram AB represents a synchronic "axis of simultaneities" - a language state at some

point in time. For example, if you want to know the state of Portuguese spoken in Mozambique
in the post independence period, you will carry out the synchronic study and you will notice that
there were some new words and expressions which entered the language because of the
sociopolitic and socioeconomic situation of the country. Do you remember words like
'Xiconhoca', 'boateiro', 'candonga' and 'candongueiro'? These and other words and expressions are
good examples of the words which entered the Portuguese spoken in Mozambique in the 80s.

CD is a diachronic "axis of sucessions" - the historical path a language has travelled.

According to this view, it’s always necessary to carry out some degree of the synchronic work
before making a diachronic study. It means that before we can say how a language has changed
from state x to state y, we need to know something about x and y.

However, the synchronic analysis can be made without referring to history. Saussure illustrates
this point with a game of chess. Why does Saussure illustrate the two approaches with a game of
chess?

In a game of chess, the state of the game is constantly changing, as each player makes his move.
At any one time, however, the state of the game can be fully described in terms of the positions
occupied by the pieces. So, by looking at the position of the pieces we are able to know the state
of the game, being that the synchonic analysis, and we may even think about the route from which
the players have arrived at a given state of the game (Lyons, 1981: 54).

Language vs langue vs parole

Do you remember that in unit 1, lesson 1, we talked about different definitions of language? We
said that there are many definitions of language and each suffered from several defects because
they failed to cover the scope of language. Thus, the many senses of the word language prompted
Saussure to introduce a three-fold set of terms, the last two of which were central to his thinking.

Language, for Saussure "is the faculty of speech present in all normal human being due to heredity
- our ability to talk to each other". This faculty is composed of two aspects:

1. Langue - the language system; and

2. Parole - the act of speaking.

The former is the totality of a language, which we could in theory discover by examining the
memories of all the language users: 'the sum of word-images stored in the minds of individuals'.
Parole is the actual, concrete act of speaking on the part of a person - a dynamic, social activity
in a particular time and place.

It means that langue is the speaker's knowledge of language or the linguistic knowledge, and
Parole is the use of that knowledge in a concrete situation, the balance of the knowledge
according to audience - if it’s a group of doctors, engineers, pupils in a primary school, students
at university, etc.

2
Then Saussure recognised two sides of meaning to the study of language, but emphasized that the
relationship between the two is arbitrary. His labels for the two sides are signifiant (the thing that
signifies; or 'sound image') and signifie (the thing signified, or 'concept'). This relationship of
signified to signifier Saussure calls a linguistic sign (Crystal, 1987:407).

The linguistic sign is the association between signifier and signified; between the sound image
and the concept, and this association is arbitrary because there is no natural or inherit relationship
between signifier and signified.

For Saussure, the sign is the basic unit of communication: langue is seen as a 'system of signs’.
Syntagmatic and Associative (or paradigmatic). For him, "A sentence is a sequence of signs, each
sign contributing something to the meaning of the whole.

When the signs are seen as a linear sequence, the relationship between them is called syntagmatic,
as in she + can + go. When a sign that is present is seen as contrasting with other signs in the
language, the relationship is called associative or paradigmatic, as in She vs He, can vs will, go
vs run in the above sentence.

Summarising, twentieth-century linguistics marks the growth of modern linguistics, from the end
of the 18th century to the present day and the Saussurean principles introduced structural
linguistics - "all language items are essentially interlinked".

Acknowledgements: Crystal, D. (1987: 407).