Saussure and Sechehaye

In this book, Pieter Seuren argues that Ferdinand de Saussure has been grossly overestimated over the past century, while his junior colleague Albert Sechehaye has been undeservedly ignored.

Saussure was anything but the great innovator he is generally believed to be. Sechehaye was a genius providing many trenchant analyses and anticipating many modern insights. The lives and w...

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In this book, Pieter Seuren argues that Ferdinand de Saussure has been grossly overestimated over the past century, while his junior colleague Albert Sechehaye has been undeservedly ignored.

Saussure was anything but the great innovator he is generally believed to be. Sechehaye was a genius providing many trenchant analyses and anticipating many modern insights. The lives and works of both men are discussed in detail and they are placed in the cultural, intellectual and social environment of their day. Much attention is paid to the theoretical issues involved, in particular to the notion and history of structuralism, to the great subject-predicate debate that dominated linguistic theory at the time, and to questions of methodology in the theory of language.

Prefaceix
List of Figuresxii
1 Introduction1
2 Who was Ferdinand de Saussure?9
2.1 Family History and Life9
2.2 The Cours de linguistique générale12
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Prefaceix
List of Figuresxii
1 Introduction1
2 Who was Ferdinand de Saussure?9
2.1 Family History and Life9
2.2 The Cours de linguistique générale12
2.3 Saussure’s Problem with His Intellectual Environment17
2.4 Saussure’s Limited Intellectual Outlook and His Implicit
Rationalism24
2.5 The Saussurean Myth29
2.5.1 The Coming about of the Saussurean Myth29
2.5.2 Saussure the ‘Father’ of European Structuralism?36
2.5.3 Saussure in Literature, Art and Philosophy39
3 The Cours: A Critical Look43
3.1 Language as a Social Phenomenon43
3.1.1 The Social Dimension of Language43
3.1.2 Early French Sociology46
3.1.3 ‘Völkerpsychology’48
3.2 Linguistics as the Science of Language, Not of Speech51
3.2.1 The Tasks of Linguistics51
3.2.2 The Distinction between ‘Langue’ and ‘Parole’52
3.2.3 ‘Frequency Linguistics’ Untenable54
3.2.4 Who Introduced the Distinction between ‘Langue’ and
‘Parole’?56
3.2.5 The Speech Circuit58
3.3 The Notion of Syntax and the Notion of Sentence60
3.3.1 The Notion of Syntax60
3.3.2 The Notion of Sentence64
3.4 The Notion of Sign and Its History69
3.4.1 Saussure’s Notion of Sign69
3.4.2 The Type-Token Distinction74
3.4.3 Some History of the Notion of Sign78
3.4.4 The Arbitrariness of the Linguistic Sign80
3.4.5 The Linearity of the Signifier87
3.5 Differences, Oppositions and ‘Valeurs’88
3.5.1 Comparison with Chess89
3.5.2 Only Differences in the Language System?92
3.6 Synchrony versus Diachrony94
3.7 Conclusion101
4 Charles-Albert Sechehaye103
4.1 Private Life103
4.2 Scholarly Life: Preliminaries105
4.2.1 Production and Reception106
4.2.2 Weaknesses and Prejudices107
4.2.3 Sechehaye and Saussure: A Paradoxical Relation110
4.2.4 Sechehaye and Bally: At Cross Purposes120
4.2.5 Why was Sechehaye Forgotten, or, Rather, Ignored?125
4.3 Programme et Méthodes of 1908127
4.3.1 Overall Survey of pmlt129
4.3.2 Comments on Successive Chapters133
4.4 The Essai Sur La Structure Logique De La Phrase of 1926147
4.4.1 Overall Survey of slp147
4.4.2 Comments on Successive Chapters149
5 Sechehaye and the Great Subject-Predicate Debate160
5.1 The Subject-Predicate Debate: How it Arose and Ended up in a
Quagmire160
5.2 How Did Sechehaye Deal with the Subject-Predicate
Debate?167
5.3 Why Discourse-Driven and Fact-Driven Propositions?174
5.4 Intermezzo on the General Structure of Propositions175
5.5 An Analytical Synthesis of the Whole Question178
5.5.1 Definition of the Notion ‘proposition’178
5.5.2 Anchoring and Keying179
5.5.3 The Question-Answer Game: Underlying Cleft
Constructions181
5.5.4 Formal Aspects of tcm: The Need for ‘Parameter Theory’ in
Grammar188
5.5.5 The Collapse of Quine’s Argument of the Opacity of Modal
Contexts193
6 Structuralism, Rationalism and Romanticism in Psychology and
Linguistics197
6.1 What is Structuralism?197
6.2 Rationalism versus Romanticism: Clarifying the Terms207
6.3 Human versus Natural Sciences212
6.4 Reductionism214
6.5 The Coming about of the Human Sciences220
6.6 Early Structuralism in Psychology: The Theory of ‘Gestalts’224
6.7 Early Structuralism in Linguistics227
6.7.1 The Young Grammarians227
6.7.2 Who Were, and Are, the Real Structuralists in
Linguistics?235
6.7.3 Romanticist or Nonstructuralist Grammar?238
6.8 Summary240
7 Conclusions242
Bibliography245
Index261
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