#Quote
More Quotes by Ferdinand de Saussure
Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.
I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.
Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things.
Henceforth, language studies were no longer directed merely towards correcting grammar.
A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.
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.
The critical principle demanded an examination, for instance, of the contribution of different periods, thus to some extent embarking on historical linguistics.
Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law.
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.
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.
