Course in General Linguistics by de Saussure Ferdinand; Baskin Wade; Meisel Perry

Author:de Saussure, Ferdinand; Baskin, Wade; Meisel, Perry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Language Arts and Disciplines/Linguistics
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-11-16T05:00:00+00:00

3. Practical Dificulties of Delimitation

The method outlined above is very simple in theory, but is it easy to apply? We are tempted to think so if we start from the notion that the units to be isolated are words. For what is a sentence except a combination of words? And what can be grasped more readily than words? Going back to the example given above, we may say that the analysis of the spoken chain sižlaprã resulted in the delimiting of four units, and that the units are words: si-je-l-apprends. But we are immediately put on the defensive on noting that there has been much disagreement about the nature of the word, and a little reflection shows that the usual meaning of the term is incompatible with the notion of concrete unit.

To be convinced, we need only think of French cheval ‘horse’ and its plural from chevaux. People readily say that they are two forms of the same word; but considered as wholes, they are certainly two distinct things with respect to both meaning and sound. In mwa (mois, as in le mois de Septembre ‘the month of September’) and mwaz (mois, in un mois après ‘a month later’) there are also two forms of the same word, and there is no question of a concrete unit. The meaning is the same, but the slices of sound are different. As soon as we try to liken concrete units to words, we face a dilemma: we must either ignore the relation–which is nonetheless evident–that binds cheval and chevaux, the two sounds of mwa and mwaz, etc. and say that they are different words, or instead of concrete units be satisfied with the abstraction that links the different forms of the same word. The concrete unit must be sought, not in the word, but elsewhere. Besides, many words are complex units, and we can easily single out their subunits (suffixes, prefixes, radicals). Derivatives like pain-ful and delight-ful can be divided into distinct parts, each having an obvious meaning and function. Conversely, some units are larger than words: compounds (French porte-plume ‘penholder’), locutions (s’il vous plaît ‘please’), inflected forms (il a été ‘he has been’), etc. But these units resist delimitation as strongly as do words proper, making it extremely difficult to disentangle the interplay of units that are found in a sound-chain and to specify the concrete elements on which a language functions.

Doubtless speakers are unaware of the practical difficulties of delimiting units. Anything that is of even the slightest significance seems like a concrete element to them and they never fail to single it out in discourse. But it is one thing to feel the quick, delicate interplay of units and quite another to account for them through methodical analysis.

A rather widely held theory makes sentences the concrete units of language: we speak only in sentences and subsequently single out the words. But to what extent does the sentence belong to language (see p. 124)? If it belongs to speaking, the sentence cannot pass for the linguistic unit.

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