NEOGRAMMARIAN FERDINAND: A NATURAL HERMENEUTICS OF MÉMOIRE SUR LE SYSTÈME PRIMITIF DES VOYELLES DANS LES LANGUES INDO-EUROPÉENNES
Małgorzata Haładewicz-Grzelak
Studium Języków Obcych Politechnika OpolskaAbstract
While “de Saussure” is in fact THE name that has always been automatically brought up
at any mention of “linguistics” and “semiotics”, that scholar might be nevertheless the most
enigmatic and tantalizing persona in the history of linguistics. In retrospective, whenever
there was a question of criticizing de Saussure, he was referred to as a Neogrammarian, and
whenever the aim was to praise him – as a structuralist [Jankowsky 1972: 185]. Following
e.g. Percival [1981], Jakobson [1973] or Koerner [e.g. 1989], this paper challenges the usually taken for granted view that it was de Saussure who founded modern linguistics and takes
an alternative look on de Saussure’s oeuvre from the point of view of the Neogrammarian
school. Through a personal hermeneutic reading of the only book that de Saussure published
and approved for publication (Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues
indo-européennes, 1879), I will argue that de Saussure’s monograph, within the ambit of
epistemological premises, is a mutiny on many levels against the phonological world of his
times. In this way, the discussion contributes to a larger project pointing to misapprehensions
in Neogrammarian achievements, which are assumed to ensue from the contemporary
emphasis on the revolutionary aspects of linguistic paradigms over their evolutionary
development [cf. also Pociechina 2009; Kiklewicz 2007, 2014].
Keywords:
Neogrammarians, Ferdinand de Saussure, language change, Mémoire, PIE sonantsReferences
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Studium Języków Obcych Politechnika Opolska
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