Saussure生平及理论简介.pptVIP

Saussure Modern Linguistics General Introduction to Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. Saussure is widely considered to be one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics and of semiotics(符号语言学), and his ideas have had a monumental impact throughout the humanities and social sciences. Biography In 1857, born in Geneva From 1875—1876, he studied Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and a variety of courses at the University of Geneva ; From 1876—1878, graduate work at the University of Leipzig ; From 1878—1879, he studied for a year at Berlin ; In 1880 ,he was awarded his doctorate in Leipzig; From 1880—1891，he taught in Paris; From 1891—1913，he lectured on Sanskrit and Indo-European at the University of Geneva His Major Work ——Course in General Linguistics (Cours de linguistique générale) is the influential book compiled by Charles Bally and , that is based on notes taken from Ferdinand de Saussures lectures at the University of Geneva between the years 1906 and 1911. It was published posthumously(死后出版的) in 1916 and is generally regarded as the starting point of structuralism, an approach to linguistics that flourished in Europe and America in the first half of the 20th century. Arbitrary Nature of Signs The basic principle of the arbitrariness of the sign (larbitraire du signe) in the extract from Course in General Linguistics is: —— there is no natural reason why a particular sign should be attached to a particular concept. Or: the forms of linguistic signs bear no natural relationship to their meaning. For instance,we cannot explain why a book is called a /buk/ and a dog a [d?g] . Point 1 It is Saussures argument that it is only the consistency in the system of signs that allows communication of the concept each sign signifies. In Figure 2 above, the signified tree is impossible to represent because the si