#Quote
The ultimate law of language is, dare we say, that nothing can ever reside in a single term. This is a direct consequence of the fact that linguistic signs are unrelated to what they designate and that, therefore, 'a' cannot designate anything without the the aid of 'b' and vice versa, or, in other words, that both have value only by the difference between them.
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More Quotes by Ferdinand de Saussure
A language presupposes that all the individual users possess the organs.
Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law.
Everyone, left to his own devices, forms an idea about what goes on in language which is very far from the truth.
It is only since linguistics has become more aware of its object of study, i.e. perceives the whole extent of it, that it is evident that this science can make a contribution to a range of studies that will be of interest to almost anyone.
The connection between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.
Henceforth, language studies were no longer directed merely towards correcting grammar.
Any psychology of sign systems will be part of social psychology - that is to say, will be exclusively social; it will involve the same psychology as is applicable in the case of languages.
Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other.
In general, the philological movement opened up countless sources relevant to linguistic issues, treating them in quite a different spirit from traditional grammar; for instance, the study of inscriptions and their language. But not yet in the spirit of linguistics.
It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and how language lives, carries on and changes over time.
