NEOGRAMMARIAN FERDINAND: A NATURAL HERMENEUTICS OF MÉMOIRE SUR LE SYSTÈME PRIMITIF DES VOYELLES DANS LES LANGUES INDO-EUROPÉENNES

• Authors: Haładewicz-Grzelak Małgorzata
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

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

EN

Neogrammarians; Ferdinand de Saussure; language change; Mémoire; PIE sonants

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski w Olsztynie
• Journal: Acta Neophilologica
• Year: 2014
• Volume: XVI/1
• Pages: 27-40

Dates

published

2014-06-01

Contributors

author

Haładewicz-Grzelak Małgorzata

• Studium Języków Obcych Politechnika Opolska

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