Bücher von Ferdinand de Saussure

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Der beruhmte Text stellt den Ausgangspunkt fur die Beschaftigung mit dem Strukturalismus dar. Die deutsche Ubersetzung erschien 1931, die 2. Auflage von 1967 leitete im deutschsprachigen Raum die bis heute andauernde intensive Saussure-Rezeption ein. 1916 veroffentlichten zwei Schuler Saussures drei Vorlesungen unter dem Titel "e;Cours de linguistique generale"e;. Der Text beruhte auf den Mitschriften von drei Vorlesungen uber allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, die Saussure 1907 bis 1911 hielt. Der "e;Cours"e; wurde nicht nur zum Ausgangspunkt fur eine Reihe von neuen linguistischen Disziplinen (wie Phonologie, strukturalistische Morphologie, strukturalistische Syntax, strukturelle Semantik, Glossematik), sondern beeinflute auch traditionelle Richtungen wie die Sprachgeschichte, Dialektologie und Sprachphilosophie. Aus dem Nachwort: Wie jedes groe Werk lebt auch der "e;Cours"e; dadurch weiter, dass er vielerlei Interpretationen zulasst... Seine Bedeutung kann aber wohl noch immer am treffendsten mit jener knappen Formulierung umschrieben werden, die Leonard Bloomfield schon 1923 in seiner Rezension gab: Der Wert des "e;Cours"e; besteht in seiner klaren und genauen Darstellung der fundamentalen Prinzipien. Das meiste von dem, was der Autor sagt, lag schon seit langem "e;in der Luft"e;, die Systematisierung aber stammt von ihm. [...] Der entscheidende Punkt aber ist, dass de Saussure hier zum ersten Mal die Welt ausgemessen hat, in der die historische Grammatik des Indo-Europaischen (die groe Errungenschaft des vorigen Jahrhunderts) nur ein einzelnes Teilgebiet darstellt; er hat uns die theoretische Grundlage fur eine Wissenschaft von der menschlichen Sprache gegeben.

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), the founder of structuralist linguistics and pioneer of semiotics, began his career as a scholar of Indo-European languages (his early study of the Proto-Indo-European vowel system is also reissued in this series: ISBN 9781108006590). In 1880, Saussure was awarded a doctorate from the University of Leipzig for this study, which appeared in print in 1881. He published almost nothing more during his lifetime. Earlier Indo-Europeanists had noted the almost complete absence of the genitive absolute from Classical Sanskrit texts. Saussure argued that it must have been a feature of colloquial speech, as it appears in formulaic expressions in less 'purist' Sanskrit texts, as well as in Pali. He analyses different forms of the construction, and lists nearly 500 examples, many from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The thesis is also of interest as it reveals Saussure's early approach to problems of syntax.

Ferdinand de Saussure is commonly regarded as one of the fathers of 20th Century Linguistics. His lectures, posthumously published as the Course in General Linguistics ushered in the structuralist mode which marked a key turning point in modern thought. Philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, psychoanalysts such as Jacques Lacan, the anthropologist ClaudeLevi-Strauss and linguists such as Noam Chomsky all found an important influence for their work in the pages of Saussure's text. Published 100 years after Saussure's death, this new edition of Roy Harris's authoritative translation is now available in the Bloomsbury Revelations series with a substantial new introduction exploring Saussure's contemporary influence and importance.

Written in 1878, while the author was a twenty-year-old student in Berlin, Saussure's only full-length work proposed the existence of two additional sonant coefficients in the Indo-European parent language. Applying the methods of comparison and internal reconstruction to Proto-Indo-European, Saussure argued that the long vowels had developed from a short vowel plus a sonant coefficient. A hypothesis far ahead of its time, his proposal was not confirmed until 1927 when a consonantal phoneme etymologically derived from Saussure's A was discovered in newly deciphered Hittite, the oldest attested Indo-European language. Not only is the Memoire a dramatic demonstration of the method of internal reconstruction, but it also paved the way for further developments in historical phonology including laryngeal theory, and may have stimulated Saussure's later development of structuralism. This reissue includes, as an appendix, Antoine Meillet's 1913 obituary of Saussure.