A language presupposes that all the individual users possess the organs.
quote by Ferdinand de Saussure
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Henceforth, language studies were no longer directed merely towards correcting grammar.
quote by Ferdinand de Saussure
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A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.
quote by Ferdinand De Saussure
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Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things.
quote by Ferdinand de Saussure
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Everyone, left to his own devices, forms an idea about what goes on in language which is very far from the truth.
quote by Ferdinand de Saussure
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The critical principle demanded an examination, for instance, of the contribution of different periods, thus to some extent embarking on historical linguistics.
quote by Ferdinand de Saussure
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The first of these phases is that of grammar, invented by the Greeks and carried on unchanged by the French. It never had any philosophical view of a language as such.
quote by Ferdinand de Saussure
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Within speech, words are subject to a kind of relation that is independent of the first and based on their linkage: these are syntagmatic relations, of which I have spoken.
quote by Ferdinand de Saussure
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Whitney wanted to eradicate the idea that in the case of a language we are dealing with a natural faculty; in fact, social institutions stand opposed to natural institutions.
quote by Ferdinand de Saussure
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The very special place that a language occupies among institutions is undeniable, but there is much more to be said-, a comparison would tend rather to bring out the differences.
quote by Ferdinand de Saussure
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