Saussure

"In a language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, the language contains neither ideas nor sounds that pre-exist the linguistic system, but only conceptual differences and phonic differences issuing from this system." (From the posthumous Course in General Linguistics, 1916.). No one becomes as famous as Saussure without both admirers and detractors reducing them to a paragraph's worth of ideas that can be readily quoted, debated, memorized, and examined. One can argue the ideas expressed above - that language is composed.

Léopold de Saussure's colonial linguistics.

Cover; Contents; Foreword; PART I. THE WORLD INTO WHICH HE WAS BORN; 1. Rising to prominence; Switzerland and its neighbour, Geneva; The noble Saulxures of Lorraine; In Monsieur Calvin's Geneva; Becoming bourgeois; Horace-Bénédict de Saussure; Reforming the Collège de Genève; The glory of Mont Blanc, the infamy of the Revolution; 2. His grandparents' and parents' generations; The Congress of Vienna; Albertine Necker de Saussure; Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure; Alphonse de Saussure; Fanny Crud; Count Alexandre de Pourtalès; Augusta Saladin de Crans; The Genevese Revolution of 1846-1848.

Théodore de SaussureAdèle Pictet; Henri de Saussure; Countess Louise de Pourtalès; 3. The heritage of linguistics and semiology; Continuity and progress; The history of linguistics according to Saussure; The emergence of linguistic thought in Greece; The Christian Middle Ages; Renaissance and Enlightenment; The encounter with Sanskrit and the beginnings of comparativism; The vowels of primitive Indo-European; PART II. EARLY YEARS TO THE MÉMOIRE; 4. 1857-1873; Birth and childhood; Mons-Djémila and Henri Dunant; Hofwyl; The Franco-Prussian War; Institution Martine; Infatuation.

Collège de Genève5. 187…