Saussure (Ferdinand de Saussure 1857- 19 13) is the founder of modern linguistics. As a linguist, he is generally not listed as a philosopher of language, but as a pioneer of a new humanities discipline, it is conceivable that his influence on philosophy of language is extremely extensive and profound. His influence on philosophers in the Franco-German system may be greater than that in the Anglo-American system, and this book mainly discusses philosophers in the Anglo-American system, but even so, it is necessary to briefly introduce Saussure at the beginning. Of course, I will skip most of the specific content of language science and focus on the content directly related to the philosophy of language.
Saussure was born in Geneva on 1857, one year later than Freud. His father is a scientist. He received a natural science education since he was a child, and he also received a good language education and linguistics education. He is proficient in French, German, English and Latin, and at first he was familiar with Sanskrit. 15 years old, wrote an article about language. He studied physics, chemistry and Greek at the University of Geneva and the University of Leipzig. At that time, Leipzig University was the center of new linguists, and the study there probably decided Saussure's future linguistic career. It was during this period that Saussure published his first important paper, The Primitive Cause System of Indo-European Language, which attracted academic attention. He was only 2 1 year old at that time. After receiving his Ph.D., Saussure moved to Paris and taught Sanskrit, Gothic, Ancient Highland German and Indo-European Literature at the Institute of Advanced Studies. 189 1 year, he was invited back to Geneva and became a professor at the University of Geneva. Compared with Paris, the academic research there is relatively backward and the students' level is low. Saussure's life is a typical scholar's life, with no legend. He was a famous linguist when he was alive, but his status as a great thinker was not recognized until after his death.
Saussure published only a few quite professional papers before his death. 1907-1911taught general linguistics at Geneva university for three semesters. 19 13 After his death, his students and colleagues compiled a book "A Course in General Linguistics" based on several handouts. Saussure was not only stingy with publishing, but also left few notes, so it was not easy to edit this book. There are many repetitions in these three semesters, and there are many different or even inconsistent contents. It's amazing that the editors merged and combed into a book and became a world masterpiece.
It seems difficult to understand the scarcity of Saussure's works before his death in our era of paying too much attention to works. In fact, many great thinkers left no stereotyped writing before they died. I just need to mention Confucius, Socrates, Wittgenstein and maybe Aristotle. Their main works are compiled by students. I think there are many reasons. Thought is alive, and it is extremely difficult to reach a systematic and thorough thought, attracting people to constantly think about deeper problems, and so on. It is a pity that we future generations can only understand their thoughts through works. Of course, we have never lived in a prosperous time, and it is even more disappointing that we cannot directly listen to the exploration of these thinkers at the ideological scene.
The principle of giving and referring, arbitrariness
Language is a symbol system that expresses ideas with sounds, and symbols are used to combine the expresser and the signified. Saussure called it signifier (signifier and signified) and signified (signifier, signifier, signifier, signifier, signifier). Here, I want to clarify a misunderstanding, that is, I think the so-called reference refers to the existence of something. For example, "horse" refers to one or several horses with flesh and blood. This is not what Saussure meant. In Saussure's view, it refers to the concept, or simply the concept. The sound of a horse refers to the concept of a horse. "Language symbols connect not things and names, but concepts and sound forms", p. 10 1. The specific content of this formulation will be gradually clarified below.
It is arbitrary to combine such a reference with such a reference into a symbol. The simplest content of the principle of arbitrariness is that Chinese refers to the concept of horse with its voice, while English refers to the concept with its voice. Onomatopoeia may be an exception, but at least it is not a rule. Saussure said: Not organic. 104- 105。 The deep content of this principle is that language does not simply name existing things or concepts, but creates its own reference. For example, there are two concepts of worm and love in Chinese, but no two concepts in English are completely equivalent to ours. "Worm" sometimes translates into adults, and sometimes translates into adults. "love" translates into love, like, want, tendency and so on according to the context. Worm and worm are not different references to the same reference. In various languages, references themselves are created and constructed. We can construct a concept from many aspects, such as the difference between a river and a stream. The difference between a river and a stream lies in its width and short, and the difference between fleuve and riviere lies in the fact that the former flows into the ocean. One difference between a river and a river lies in the south and the north. This can also be seen from a diachronic perspective. The so-called change of meaning is the change of reference. After meeting you, insects can generally refer to animals, but not now. If the "sign arbitrariness principle" only says that ready-made concepts can be quoted at will, it will become an extremely simple cliche. The essence of this principle lies in arbitrariness or creativity ―― every language divides the world into different concepts and categories in a unique and "arbitrary" way. It is based on this essence that Saussure said that this principle is "the first priority". 103。 ["This truth ranks first by ranking", quoted from Kale, 2 1] "Its significance is immeasurable" [English version, 68 pages, the same below. 〕
From here, we can easily see another feature of symbols, that is, the concept is the result of arbitrary division of continuous reality. Increase. Before language appeared, everything was vague. 157。
The signifier and the signified are purely related things. The similarities and differences of color words in various languages can be taken as a typical example to illustrate this point. No matter how many brown things pile up in front of his eyes, he will never learn the concept of brown unless he learns to distinguish brown from red, yellow and so on. Kale 27-28. Concepts are established through the differences between them, and we actually explain a specific concept through the differences with another concept or other concepts. [Question: So how did we learn the first concept in the first place? Besides, what happened to proper nouns? Concepts are purely differences, which cannot be determined from the front according to their contents, but only from the back according to their relationship with other members of the system. Their most exact feature is that they are nothing else. " 1 17。
Saussure used several metaphors to illustrate the relationship between pure form and pure difference. It doesn't matter what shape the chess king is made of, what matters is that it can be distinguished from the queen, horse, soldier and so on. A shuttle bus, no matter how to change carriages, drivers and flight attendants, is the same as long as it starts from the same place at the same time every day and arrives at another same place at the same time. There are even cases where the bus departing at 8:25 according to the train schedule is delayed 10 minutes every day. We still call the 8:25 bus, as long as it is different from other cars.
Not only the reference of a symbol is determined by the difference, but also the reference of a symbol is determined by the difference. Each of us will have some differences in pronunciation and intonation, there will be some differences at this time and there will be some differences at that time, but everyone knows that we are talking about the same word, as long as I say that superb ability is obviously different from orgasm, singing and so on. Quote a passage from kale 66-67.
Similarities and differences in language systems are purely formal and defined by structural levels. When we say a language unit, of course, we mean that the unit is self-consistent, but how can we be sure that it is one unit rather than multiple units? For example, how to ensure that all B's with different pronunciations are B's? Whether B with different pronunciations belongs to the same unit at the phonetic level depends on whether they can distinguish higher levels. For example, in English, the difference between B and P (voiced and unvoiced) has a distinguishing function at a higher level, that is, at the word level. For example, bet is a different word from pet, so some pronunciations are the same as B, and some are the same as P. On the contrary, Chinese does not distinguish words with voiced and unvoiced sounds. So B and P in English pronunciation are the same unit in Chinese. It is impossible for us to directly determine which units exist at the lower level without looking at the higher level, and then examine how these units are combined and how they work.
Saussure believes that among various forms of relationships, two are the most basic. He called them "associative relationships" respectively, and now they are more called aggregation relationships and aggregation relationships. Lenovo relationship is really bad. Without it, association doesn't have to include "thinking", because the speaker doesn't have to think about anything at all. This is about the potential conditions and subtext of logic, not the speaker's consciousness or subconscious. Take Wittgenstein's Slate as an example. ) and combinatorial relation (1230: combinatorial relation [1230]). 17 1。 The former, such as p and b, is in contrast to foot and foot. The latter is the relationship between sequences, which determines whether two units can be combined. These two relations are applicable to all levels of language analysis, and the whole language system can be explained through these two relations.
langue and parole
If both signifier and signified are established through differences, then obviously, they must exist in the system: phonetics must form a system before we can distinguish this word from that word, and concepts must also be located in a conceptual system. This is Saussure's "language system" or "system composed of forms". The opposite of language [system] is speech. Langage langue and speech [parrot] are Saussure's first set of basic duality. Saussure described this duality in many ways. Speech is personal, subordinate and accidental, and language is social and primary. From the perspective of speech, two people say the same word, and their voices may be very different. From a linguistic point of view, these two distinct voices are saying the same word. Verbally, Zhang San said "I" meant Zhang San and Li Si said I meant Li Si. In language, I mean neither Zhang San nor Li Si, but the speaker. Speaking a sentence belongs to speech, but the concept of the sentence belongs to language. Generally speaking, language is said to be the grammatical system in the minds of members of the same language, while speech is what people usually say, depending on the grammatical system. Speech is the embodiment of language. Linguistics studies the formal system hidden in the actual language behavior. Therefore, in Saussure's view, the object of linguistics is language, not speech.
Corresponding to the difference between language and speech, Saussure distinguished two meanings. Words are valuable in language and meaningful in discourse. Increase.
* * * Time and duration
The synchronic and diachronic studies of language are also called static linguistics and evolutionary linguistics. 1 19。 * * * phenomenon is the relationship between various forms that exist at the same time (such as opposition). Everything in ordinary grammar belongs to the tense of * * * *. 144。 Language is constantly changing. Saussure certainly knows that he not only often cites the changes in all aspects of language to demonstrate, but also points out the inevitability of language changes: the division of reference to the real continuum is arbitrary, and nothing in the real continuum can guarantee that there must be such a reference. Simply put, from the experience, the concepts of different languages are different, and the concepts of the same language are constantly changing. For example, the river originally refers to the Yellow River, and later refers to the river; In the past, insects generally referred to animals. Once two insects were ignorant and should be emperors, but now they are not. [Kale 23-24 take English words and French words as examples, such as cows. Similarly, pronunciation will change constantly. Paradoxically, however, it is for this reason that language study is essentially a study of time. This is because language is a formal system, the value of each unit is determined by other units, and the relationship between this unit and other units must be tense. Language is constantly changing, that is, the relationship between each unit and other units is constantly changing. However, when all films are made at any time, the relationship between each unit and other units in all these films is certain and needs to be changed. "The state of language [should be directly said to be static] is no different from the projection of historical reality in a certain period" 127. Linguistics originally studies the logical relationship of this projection. Therefore, although there are reasons for diachronic events, what kind of logical consequences will be produced has nothing to do with this reason. Although "diachronic fact is an event with its own reasons for existence", "what special consequences it may have has nothing to do with it." 124。 Explain the logic and cut off the material basis from the facts, and imagine the natural history by yourself. The diachronic evolution of language phenomenon itself is meaningless, and the meaning was originally discussed under the framework of * * * time system. It can be seen that the so-called language is diachronic and diachronic, so it is mediocre to study the two aspects together, and its unchangeable correctness comes from the numbness of theoretical problems. Diachronic and tense are not two phenomena in the language system, but two angles when studying the system. So "diachronic equals non-grammatical, just as * * * equals grammatical." 195。 Of course, we can also do diachronic research on language, but diachronic research is still based on diachronic research, because there is no single word evolution, only a systematic evolution. Diachronic research actually studies the relationship between two diachronic systems. Diachronic description comes from time description. [Kale 46-48 has a wonderful explanation. In linguistics, explaining a word is to find out the relationship between it and other words. Etymology may help this work, but it is not an explanation of the meaning of the word itself. 264-265。
Saussure opposes the teleology of language change. He believes that the change of language comes from the spontaneous and accidental changes of some components. In other words, the change of language system is driven, not guided. ] "Some components have changed themselves regardless of their joint relationship in the whole system." Tutorial 85 or so. Saussure's idea is consistent with Darwin's theory of evolution. In fact, he also quoted Darwin to explain that evolution has no clear purpose.
"The initial fact has nothing to do with its possible consequences for the whole system." 127。 This view cannot but remind people of Hayek and other liberals' general views on social development. Historical production forms, systematic use forms, formal science or so-called normative science study how these forms are used, not how they are produced. Historical science studies the emergence of these forms, but historical science is based on formal science, or at least on the understanding of the use of forms, because we don't know what forms are except use. Form is not synonymous with shape in the general sense. Shape is natural, but form is meaningful.
However, there is an evolution that is hardly accidental, and that is the evolution from analogy. Saussure believes that this evolution itself is * * * temporal.
Since language is always a system, any change of components is a change of the system. Saussure did say so. However, the language system has a center and an edge, and it is insensitive to the changes of the edge, so it can be said that although some components have changed, the language system itself has not changed.
Saussure does not mean that we can distinguish between * * * and diachronic phenomena in all cases. In fact, except in the field of phonetics, it is often impossible to distinguish clearly in the fields of semantics. Saussure's thought of * * * time/duration is mainly used to define the content of linguistic research. But this proposition obviously involves far-reaching historical and timeliness issues, and we can't discuss these major issues here. I just want to mention briefly: the reason why * * * time/duration has become a unique issue in linguistic research is because linguistics studies symbols, which are purely formal things, and pure form is naturally defined from its timelessness. The value of a piece of land does not depend entirely on the change of currency. The land itself (in other words, the comparison between this land and other land) is a factor that determines the value. However, the symbol itself has no value, and its value depends entirely on its position in the symbol system. "If the value exists in the thing itself and in the natural relationship between things, we can trace this value to some extent from the perspective of diachronic development. But don't forget that this value depends on the value system that coexists with it at any time. " Tutorial, 80
structuralism
Structuralism is not only the main tradition of later linguistics, but also extends to many social/humanistic research fields, such as. 1946, Levi Strauss put forward the relationship between structural analysis and anthropology. It was not until 196 1 that he clearly put forward that anthropology is a branch of semiotics.
Although Saussure himself has no philosophical works in general, his linguistic views not only contributed to this science, but also had a far-reaching impact on modern thought. He is not only an expert, but also a real thinker. To a certain extent, society can be regarded as a whole structure, and individuals are units in this structure. It is not natural for individuals to become units, but they are defined by their functions at a higher level. (Chen Jiaying)