Editing Ferdinand de Saussure (section)

==Work and influence==
Saussure's theoretical reconstructions of the [[Proto-Indo-European language]] vocalic system and particularly his [[laryngeal theory|theory of laryngeals]], otherwise unattested at the time, bore fruit and found confirmation after the decipherment of [[Hittite language|Hittite]] in the work of later generations of linguists such as [[Émile Benveniste]] and [[Walter Couvreur]], who both drew direct inspiration from their reading of the 1878 ''Mémoire''.<ref>[[E. F. K. Koerner]], 'The Place of Saussure's Memoire in the development of historical linguistics,' in Jacek Fisiak (ed.) ''Papers from the Sixth International Conference on Historical Linguistics,'' (Poznań, Poland, 1983) John Benjamins Publishing, 1985 pp.323-346, p.339.</ref>

Saussure had a major impact on the development of linguistic theory in the first half of the 20th century with his notions becoming incorporated in the central tenets of [[structuralism|structural linguistics]]. His main contributions to structuralism include his notion of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Jensen |first=Klaus Bruhn |title=A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies |publisher=Routledge |year=2002 |isbn=0-415-22514-0 |location=London |pages=25 |language=en}}</ref> There is also his theory of a two-tiered reality about language. The first is the ''langue'', the abstract and invisible layer, while the second, the ''parole'', refers to the actual speech that we hear in real life.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=Michel Foucault|last=Fendler|first=Lynn|publisher=Bloomsbury|year=2010|isbn=9781472518811|location=London|pages=17}}</ref> This framework was later adopted by [[Claude Lévi-Strauss|Claude Levi-Strauss]], who used the two-tiered model to determine the reality of myths. His idea was that all myths have an underlying pattern, which forms the structure that makes them myths.<ref name=":1" />

In Europe, the most important work after Saussure's death was done by the [[Prague school]]. Most notably, [[Nikolay Trubetzkoy]] and [[Roman Jakobson]] headed the efforts of the Prague School in setting the course of [[phonology|phonological theory]] in the decades from 1940. Jakobson's universalizing structural-functional theory of phonology, based on a [[markedness]] hierarchy of [[distinctive features]], was the first successful solution of a plane of linguistic analysis according to the Saussurean hypotheses. Elsewhere, [[Louis Hjelmslev]] and [[the Copenhagen school (linguistics)|the Copenhagen School]] proposed new interpretations of linguistics from structuralist theoretical frameworks.{{citation needed|date=January 2022}}

In America, where the term ''structuralism'' became highly ambiguous, Saussure's ideas informed the [[distributionalism]] of [[Leonard Bloomfield]], but his influence remained limited.<ref>{{cite book| author = John Earl Joseph| title = From Whitney to Chomsky: Essays in the History Of American Linguisitcs| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=RUvdfiILAngC&pg=PA139| year = 2002| publisher = John Benjamins Publishing| isbn = 978-90-272-4592-2| page = 139 }}</ref><ref name="Seuren_2006">{{cite book |last1=Seuren|first1=Pieter|editor-last= Auroux|editor-first=Sylvain |title= History of the Language Sciences: An International Handbook on the Evolution of the Study of Language from the Beginnings to the Present |publisher=Walter de Gruyter|date=2008 |pages=2026–2034 |chapter=Early formalization tendencies in 20th-century American linguistics |isbn=9783110199826 | url=https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_59380/component/file_1694788/content |access-date=6 July 2020}}</ref> [[Systemic functional linguistics]] is a theory considered to be based firmly on the Saussurean principles of the sign, albeit with some modifications. [[Ruqaiya Hasan]] describes [[systemic functional linguistics]] as a 'post-Saussurean' linguistic theory. [[Michael Halliday]] argues:

{{Blockquote|Saussure took the sign as the organizing concept for linguistic structure, using it to express the conventional nature of language in the phrase "l'arbitraire du signe". This has the effect of highlighting what is, in fact, the one point of arbitrariness in the system, namely the phonological shape of words, and hence allows the non-arbitrariness of the rest to emerge with greater clarity. An example of something that is distinctly non-arbitrary is the way different kinds of meaning in language are expressed by different kinds of grammatical structure, as appears when linguistic structure is interpreted in functional terms<ref>Halliday, MAK. 1977. Ideas about Language. Reprinted in Volume 3 of MAK Halliday's Collected Works. Edited by J.J. Webster. London: Continuum. p113.</ref>}}

===''Course in General Linguistics''===
{{Main|Course in General Linguistics}}

Saussure's most influential work, ''[[Course in General Linguistics]]'' (''Cours de linguistique générale''), was published posthumously in 1916 by former students [[Charles Bally]] and [[Albert Sechehaye]], based on notes taken from Saussure's lectures in Geneva.<ref>Macey, D. (2009). The Penguin dictionary of critical theory. Crane Library at the University of British Columbia.</ref> The ''Course'' became one of the [[wikt:seminal|seminal]] linguistics works of the 20th century not primarily for the content (many of the ideas had been anticipated in the works of other 20th-century linguists) but for the innovative approach that Saussure applied in discussing linguistic phenomena.

Its central notion is that language may be analyzed as a [[formal system]] of differential elements, apart from the messy dialectics of real-time production and comprehension. Examples of these elements include his notion of the [[sign (linguistics)|linguistic sign]], which is composed of the signifier and the signified. Though the sign may also have a referent, Saussure took that to lie beyond the linguist's purview.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chandler |first=Daniel |title=Semiotics: The Basics |publisher=Routledge |year=2022 |isbn=978-1-000-56294-1 |location=Oxon |language=en}}</ref>

Throughout the book, he stated that a linguist can develop a diachronic analysis of a text or theory of language but must learn just as much or more about the language/text as it exists at any moment in time (i.e. "synchronically"): "Language is a system of signs that expresses ideas". A science that studies the life of signs within society and is a part of social and general psychology. Saussure believed that semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign, and he called it semiology.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Semiotics for Beginners: Signs |url=https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/courses/BIB/semio2.htm |access-date=5 May 2022 |website=www.cs.princeton.edu}}</ref>

===Laryngeal theory===
{{main|Laryngeal theory}}
While a student, Saussure published an important work about [[Proto-Indo-European]], which explained unusual forms of word roots in terms of lost phonemes he called ''sonant coefficients''. The Scandinavian scholar [[Hermann Möller]] suggested that they might be laryngeal consonants, leading to what is now known as the laryngeal theory. After [[Hittite texts]] were discovered and deciphered, Polish linguist [[Jerzy Kuryłowicz]] recognized that a Hittite consonant stood in the positions where Saussure had theorized a lost phoneme some 48 years earlier, confirming the theory. It has been argued{{citation needed|date=October 2022}} that Saussure's work on this problem, systematizing the irregular word forms by hypothesizing then-unknown phonemes, stimulated his development of [[structuralism]].

===Influence outside linguistics===
The principles and methods employed by structuralism were later adapted in diverse fields by French intellectuals such as [[Roland Barthes]], [[Jacques Lacan]], [[Jacques Derrida]], [[Michel Foucault]], and [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]]. Such scholars took influence from Saussure's ideas in their areas of study (literary studies/philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, etc.).{{citation needed|date=January 2022}}