Premier cours de linguistique generale (1907): d'après les cahiers d'Albert Riedlinger = Saussure's first course of lectures on general linguistics (1907): from the notebooks of Albert RiedAuthor: Ferdinand de Saussure; Eisuke Komatsu; George Wolf

312 Pages·1996·15.46 MB·English

by  G. Wolf

F. de Saussure
PREMIER COURS DE
LINGUISTIQUE GENERALE (1907)
SAUSSURE'S FIRST COURSE OF LECTURES ON
GENERAL LINGUISTICS (1907)
LANGUAGE & COMMUNICATION LIBRARY
Series Editor: Roy Harris, University of Oxford
Vol. 9 TAYLOR & CAMERON - Analysing Conversation
Vol. 10 WILSON-On the Boundaries of Conversation
Vol. 11 HUTTON - Abstraction & Instance
Vol. 12 KOMATSU & HARRIS - Saussure's Third Course of Lectures on
General Linguistics (1910-1911)
Vol. 13 HARRE & HARRIS - Linguistics and Philosophy
Vol. 14 FIGUEROA - Sociolinguistic Metatheory
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F. de Saussure
PREMIER COURS DE
LINGUISTIQUE GENERALE (1907)
d'apres les cahiers d'Albert Riedlinger
SAUSSURE'S FIRST COURSE OF LECTURES
ON GENERAL LINGUISTICS (1907)
From the notebooks of Albert Riedlinger
French text edited by
EISUKE KOMATSU
Gakushuin University, Tokyo
English translation by
GEORGE WOLF
University of New Orleans
PERGAMON
OXFORD • NEW YORK • SEOUL • TOKYO
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JAPAN Elsevier Science Japan, Tsunashima Building Annex,
3-20-12 Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113, Japan
Copyright © 1996 Eisuke Komatsu and George Wolf
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted
in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise, without permission in writing from the
copyright holders.
First edition 1996
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
Library of Congress
British Library Cataloging in Publication Data
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British Library
ISBN 008 042578 X
Printed in Great Britain by BPC Wheatons Ltd, Exeter
Contents
Foreword vii
Editorial note x
Translator's note xiii
Cahier I
Preliminaires
§ 1 Introduction 1
§ 2 Analyse des erreurs linguistiques 3
Principes de phonologie 12
Linguistique 27
Premiere partie. Les evolutions
Chapitre I. Les evolutions phonetiques
§ 1 28
§ 2 30
§ 3 Causes des changements phonetiques 37
§ 4 Effet ou consequence des changements phonetiques 42
Cahier II 53
Chapitre II. Changements analogiques 55
Analogie, principe general des creations de la langue 63
Le classement interieur 66
Prefixes 72
Racines 75
Role conservateur de 1'analogic 97
Cahier III 98
Aperc.u sur 1'histoire interne et externe de la famille des langues
indoeuropeennes 105
Methode reconstructive et sa valeur
§ 1 Identite de la methode comparative et de la methode
reconstructive 111
Reconstruction de formes et recomposition de faits 114
But de ces reconstructions, leur certitude 115
Consequences de la perte des syllabes 120
Selective index of French terminology 127
v
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Foreword
In 1955 the Bibliotheque Publique et Universitaire (BPU) of the city of
Geneva acquired from the two sons of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure -
Jacques de Saussure (diplomat, 1892-1969) and Raymond de Saussure
(psychiatrist, 1894-1971) - the unpublished manuscripts of their father.
Since then the collection has greatly expanded: in 1958 Constantin's notes
to the third course (donated by him), the autograph notes on German myths
and legends, the notes on anagrams, and, in 1979, Riedlinger's notes to the
first and second courses (donated by his family). The entirety of these
manuscripts, rough drafts, scraps of paper, and student notes were
classified and organized in 24 cartons by Robert Godel.
It is well known that the Cours de linguistique generale (CLG)
published under the name of Saussure, but in fact Written by his disciples
Bally and Sechehaye, is essentially a resume of three courses given over
five years (1907, 1908-9, 1910-11). And it so happens that one can sense
straightaway that the composition of the book, far from being a natural
one, is rather artificial, even occasionally incomprehensible. For example,
the appendix to the introduction ('Principes de phonologie') does not
square with the chapters which follow it on account of its material
reflection on speech sounds. Indeed, it seems clear that the first and last
parts of the CLG actually conflict with each other. Such tensions are an
understandable result of the fact that the Cours has been read hitherto
without regard to the development of Saussure's ideas over those five
years. One of the aims of publishing the manuscript notebooks is to bring
to light the actual development of Saussure's teaching.
It is useful to bear in mind that the Cours contains the above-
mentioned appendix, based in part on material imported from outside the
three sets of lectures on general linguistics. As the editors say, for this
annexed part they were able to use 'a shorthand record of three lectures by
F. de S. in 1897 on the 'theory of the syllable', where he touches also on
the general principles of the first chapter [of the CLG]; moreover, a fair
number of his personal notes dealt with phonology; on many points they
clarify and complete what is provided by the first and third courses' (CLG,
p. 63). However, the appendix has something out of place and
heterogeneous about it when it is compared with the part of the Cours
dealing with langue, which is based primarily on the second half of the
third course (upon which light was later shed by Constantin's notes (esp.
notebooks VII and ff.) of whose existence Bally and Sechehaye were
unaware; see F. de Saussure, Troisieme cours de linguistique generale
(1910-1911) d'apres les cahiers d'Emile Constantin, edited and translated
by Eisuke Komatsu & Roy Harris, Language & Communication Library
vol. 12, Oxford: Pergamon, 1993). In it Saussure explains the speech act as
if linguists were concerned with actual speech sound in the referential
VII
viii Premier Cours de Linguistique Generale
world; yet how is it possible to attribute to speech sound a regularly
structured phonetic identity beyond a natural classification on an organic
and articulatory basis? Trubetskoy's notion of the 'phoneme' was, as
everyone knows, based not upon this part dealing with phonetics, but on
Saussure's idea of langue in the third course. We can really only say that
this 'physiological phonetic' appendix does not fit in well with the total
architecture of the Cours. Nonetheless, it is a starting point from which
Saussure would develop his lectures on general linguistics.
A note on terminology. According to Saussure himself, phonology
was the static study of actual speech sound, whereas phonetics was the
historical study of sound change. Saussure began the course by explaining
the motivation for historical change, but as can be seen from the table of
contents of Riedlinger's notes, only the first part of the first course was to
be devoted to linguistic evolution. The fact that he did not get beyond this
is doubtless explained by Saussure's hurried situation of having to accept
the post in general linguistics just before the academic year 1906-7. It was
in December 1906, his predecessor Joseph Wertheimer having retired, and
fifteen years after he had returned to his native city, that Saussure was
elected to the new chair in general linguistics. One may wonder whether he
hesitated to accept the post in the new subject. In any event, it would have
been natural to begin the new course using material he already had at hand;
accordingly, the notes to the first course largely reflect research for which
he had been widely known since the publication of the Memoire in 1879.
Nonetheless, with regard to structural method, the 'Principles of
phonology' foreshadow a new position in two ways: (1) Saussure classifies
linguistic sounds according to the notion 'aperture', using a scale from zero
to six. This reflects the beginnings of a structuralist method in that the
whole situation of sounds can be surveyed in a single view, by means of a
classification table. (2) While it is true that 'the phoneme will have been
determined in determining the phonatory act, and reciprocally we will have
determined every type of phoneme in determining every phonatory act'
(below, p. 15), still the phoneme is defined as 'the sum of acoustic [read:
auditory] impressions and articulatory acts, the heard and spoken unit, one
conditioning the other' (below, p. 13). It should be pointed out that this
notion does not succeed in serving to delimit phonemes in langue; rather,
Saussure speaks of the phoneme as an identifiable unit of parole. The idea
of langue as 'opposition', 'difference', and 'value' really only came into
focus in the last half of the third course. I do not take this to be a
contradiction, but as stages in the development of Saussure's ideas.
The first course was given from 16 January (Wednesday) to 31 July
(Wednesday) 1907. On the first page of his notes Riedlinger indicates the
date of the first lecture as 'Wednesday 16.1.1906'. However, since 16
January 1906 fell on a Tuesday, there can be no doubt that the first lecture
of the first course was delivered on 16 January 1907, a Wednesday. The
course had six students, among whom was Caille who left a set of
Foreword ix
shorthand notes; but the notebooks of Riedlinger are the most detailed. The
dates of the lectures are not identifiable apart from those of the first day
and the last day, noted by Riedlinger.
Riedlinger's notes to the first course published here comprise a tiny
part of the huge Saussurean nachlass to be found in the following four
libraries: (1) the Bibliotheque Publique et Universitaire in Geneva, (2) the
Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, (3) the Houghton Library at Harvard
University, and (4) the Scientific and Academic Archives in Saint
Petersburg. All of these manuscripts, except for those of Saint Petersburg,
exist today in Japan in microfilm, are printed in the form of photocopies
from the microfilm, and are available to the public. They total some
10,000 pages. In addition, the Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure (vol. 27
(1970-72)) has published all the correspondence of Saussure and Baudoin
de Courtenay, from the manuscripts in the Library of Saint Petersburg.
The minute work of transcription of these student notebooks was
done thanks to group readings by Noriyoshi Miyake, Tadao Shimomiya and
Hiroshi Abe. I am extremely grateful to them. For this edition of the first
course with English translation, the entire text of the Japanese edition
(Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique generale, premier et
troisieme cours d' apres les notes de Riedlinger et Constantin, texte etabli
par Eisuke Komatsu, Collection Recherches Universite Gakushuin no. 24,
Tokyo, 1993) has been revised against the manuscript notebooks, and
errors corrected.
It is my hope that those for whom publishing the manuscript
notebooks amounts to little more than perpetuating a Saussure industry,
because they take Saussure's principal ideas to be sufficiently known from
the CLG, will take the trouble to reconsider Saussure's ideas in their
greater immediacy and in their development, so as perhaps thereby to be in
a position to appreciate nuances of his thinking unrevealed until now.
E.K.