Return to Saussure: A Lost Lecture from the Cours de linguistique générale
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Rauschenberg’s Saussure. AI image |
Albert Sechehaye, a young man who had just earned his teaching licence, saw an announcement posted for Saussure’s course in Greek and Latin phonology, to start in November. Although he had done no previous study of linguistics, Sechehaye registered for the course, as well as for the other one Saussure was giving, on Sanskrit.
Only later in the semester would Charles Bally, a teacher at the Collège de Genève, begin attending the lectures, without ever registering as Saussure’s student. More than twenty years afterwards, Sechehaye still vividly recalled how:
The professor entered, and we were immediately captivated by his person. He hardly seemed ‘professorial’! He looked so young, so ordinary in his bearing, yet at the same time his air of exquisite distinction and finesse, with that slightly dreamy and distant look in his clear blue eyes, gave us a foretaste of his power and originality as a thinker. Standing beside the blackboard, he gave a lecture with a succinct introductory preamble.
John E. Joseph. SAUSSURE. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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Note: All interventions by “Saussure” are direct quotations from the Cours. My contribution was to weave them into a dialogue, clarifying certain aspects through the questions posed by the “Student.”
Saussure: The linguistic sign is, then, a two-sided psychological entity. These two elements are intimately linked and each triggers the other.
The link between signal (signifiant) and signification (signifié) is arbitrary. Since we are treating a sign as the combination in which a signal (signifiant) is associated with a signification (signifié), we can express this more simply as: the linguistic sign is arbitrary.
The principle stated above is the organising principle for the whole of linguistics (toute la linguistique de la langue).
Student: If I may return to your earlier example, Maître, when you explained the arbitrary link between signal (signifiant) and signification (signifié), you said that: “there is no internal connexion, for example, between the idea ‘sister’ and the French sequence of sounds s-ö-r which acts as its signal. The same idea might as well be represented by any other sequence of sounds. This is demonstrated by differences between languages, and even by the existence of different languages. The signification ‘ox’ has as its signal b-ö-f on one side of the frontier, but o-k s (Ochs) on the other side”.
I wonder: doesn’t this risk confusing “word” (mot) with “sign” (signe)? Could you clarify how these examples relate to the more abstract definition of linguistic units?
Saussure: Since we cannot have direct access to concrete entities and linguistic units, we shall take words as examples. Although, as previously noted, words do not answer exactly to our definition of linguistic units, they will be adequate to give a rough idea, and will obviate the necessity for talking in abstract terms. So we will treat them for present purposes as specimens supposedly equivalent to the actual signs of a synchronic system. The principles which will emerge may be taken as valid for linguistic entities in general.
Speaking of the sounds and syllables of a word need not give rise to any misunderstanding, provided one always bears in mind that this refers to the sound pattern (signifiant).
Student: Thank you, Maître. Your clarification was extremely helpful. That connection between the concrete example and the abstract definition now seems much clearer. Please, do continue with your exposition.
Saussure: The word arbitrary also calls for comment. It must not be taken to imply that a signal (signifiant) depends on the free choice of the speaker. We shall see later than the individual has no power to alter a sign (signe) in any respect once it has become established in a linguistic community. The term implies simply that the signal (signifiant) is unmotivated: that is to say arbitrary in relation to its signification (signifié), with which it has no natural connexion in reality.
Student: May I pursue this point a little further? If I understand correctly, then, you are not claiming that every sign is absolutely arbitrary without exception. Is that right? Are there degrees of motivation within the system? And most importantly, is this motivation internal?
Saussure: The fundamental principle of the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign does not prevent us from distinguishing in any language between what is intrinsically arbitrary – that is, unmotivated – and what is only relatively arbitrary. Not all signs are absolutely arbitrary. In some cases, there are factors which allow us to recognise different degrees of arbitrariness, although never to discard the notion entirely. The sign may be motivated to a certain extent. The French word vingt (‘twenty’) is unmotivated, whereas dix-neuf (‘nineteen’) is not unmotivated to the same extent. For dix-neuf evokes the words of which it is composed, dix (‘ten’) and neuf (‘nine’), and those of the same numerical series: dix (‘ten’), neuf (‘nine’), vingt-neuf (‘twenty-nine’), dix huit (‘eighteen’), soixante-dix (‘seventy’), etc. Taken individually, dix and neuf are on the same footing as vingt, but dix-neuf is an example of relative motivation.
Everything having to do with languages as systems needs to be approached, we are convinced, with a view to examining the limitations of arbitrariness. For the entire linguistic system is founded upon the irrational principle that the sign is arbitrary. Applied without restriction, this principle would lead to utter chaos. But the mind succeeds in introducing a principle of order and regularity into certain areas of the mass of signs. That is the role of relative motivation. There exists no language in which nothing at all is motivated. Even to conceive of such a language is an impossibility by definition. Between the two extremes – minimum of organisation and minimum of arbitrariness – all possible varieties are found. Languages always exhibit features of both kinds intrinsically arbitrary and relatively motivated – but in very varying proportions. This is an important characteristic, which may have to be taken into account in classifying languages.
In one sense – this must not be pressed too far, but it brings out one aspect of the contrast – a distinction could be drawn between lexicological languages, in which absence of motivation reaches a maximum, and grammatical languages, in which it falls to a minimum. There are, one might say, two opposite poles towards which the whole system is drawn, or two contrary currents sweeping through it. On the one hand there is a tendency to use lexicological means, which favours the unmotivated sign. On the other hand there is a tendency to use grammatical means, which favours regular construction. English, for example, can be seen to favour lack of motivation more markedly than German.
Student: I see, so the notion of relative motivation introduces a kind of internal order within the system. That makes sense. It would be fascinating to explore more closely how this principle of arbitrariness relates to the distinction you draw between synthetic and analytic languages. Perhaps we could return to that issue in a future lecture?
Bibliography
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Cours de linguistique générale. Edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, with Albert Riedlinger. Libraire Payot.
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