Course in General Linguistics by Harris Roy de Saussure Ferdinand

Author:Harris, Roy, de Saussure, Ferdinand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Chapter 3

[150]

Identities, Realities, Values

The foregoing considerations raise a crucial problem. It is all the more important in that the fundamental concepts of static linguistics are directly based upon, or even merge with, the concept of a linguistic unit. This we now propose to show, by examining the notions of synchronic identity, synchronic reality, and synchronic value.

A. What is a synchronic identity? What is at issue here is not the kind of identity which links the French negative particle pas (‘not’) to the Latin noun passum (‘pace’): that is a diachronic identity (cf. p. [249]). It is the no less interesting kind of identity which permits us to say that two sentences like je ne sais pas (‘I don’t know’) and ne dites pas cela (‘Don’t say that’) include the same element (pas, ‘not’). An idle question, it may be thought. For clearly the identity resides in the fact that these two sentences include the same sequence of sound (pas) bearing the same meaning in both cases. But this explanation will not do. Although correlations of phonic segments and concepts establish identities (as in the example previously given: la force du vent and à bout de force, p. [147]), the converse does not hold. It is possible to have an identity without any such correlation. For example, we may hear in the course of a lecture several repetitions of the word Messieurs! (‘Gentlemen!’). We feel that in each case it is the same expression: and yet there are variations of delivery and intonation which give rise in the several instances to very noticeable phonic differences – differences as marked as those which in other cases serve to differentiate one word from another (e.g. pomme from paume, goutte from goûte, fuir from fouir, etc.).1 Furthermore, this feeling of identity persists in spite of the fact that from a semantic point of view too there is no absolute reduplication from one Messieurs! to the next. A word can express quite different ideas without seriously compromising its own identity (cf. adopter une mode, ‘to adopt a fashion’, adopter un enfant, ‘to adopt a child’; la (leur du pommier ‘the flower of the apple-tree’, la (fleur de la noblesse, ‘the flower of the nobility’).

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