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Aspects of Language Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Marcel Cohen
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Since it received the name linguistics, the science of language has undergone changes which are rather difficult to summarize. As a foreword, I would like to recall, without going too far back, that scholars and philosophers in the 18th century were investigating the origins of language without applying any systematic method, but more or less relying on those ideas which occurred to them. An essay by J. J. Rousseau should be mentioned in particular with regard to this method. An era closed with the resolution of 1868 by the newly created Linguistic Society of Paris, to restrict all study on the origins of language.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 21 , Issue 82 , June 1973 , pp. 108 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 The date is uncertain. 1826 has been given without source, and 1832 or 1833 by Charles Nodier.

2 With regard to this, see my review of the critical edition by C. Porset (Bordeaux, 1968) on J. J. Rousseau's Essai sur l'origine des langues, who never decided to publish it during his lifetime. Nouvelle Critique, Nouvelle série No. 18 (November, 1968).

3 Ferdinand de Saussure: a course taught in 1906-1907, 1908-1909 and 1910-1911 and the publication of his lectures by his disciples Bally and Séchehaye under the title of Cours de linguistique générale, Paris, Payot, 1916. This posthumous study of Saussure's notes was necessary so as to avoid a fundamental modification of his theory. A critical edition appeared in August, 1972, by the same publisher.

4 Sufficient attention has not been given to the article by Witold Doroszewsky, "Langue et parole," which appeared in French, in Prac filologicznych, Vol. 14, Warsaw, 1930, where the author seems to prefer the monist definition of language, which is a difficult definition. The monist position prompted my reflections on the ticklish question set forth in Matériaux pour une sociologie du language, Paris, Maspéro, 1971, Vol. 1, pp. 65-66.

5 I documented much of Gustave Guillaume in the catalogue which I drew up while directing the linguistic chronicle of Année sociologique (see A. S., 3rd Series, 1940-1948, Vol. 2, p. 838). I reviewed Essai sur le mode subjonctif en latin post-classique et en ancien français, Paris, PUF, 1959, by the Guillaume scholar Gérard Moignet, who re-examined the theory of his teacher (A. S., 1961, pp. 538-541). I reviewed the volume collected by Roch Valin under the title Langage et science du langage, Paris, Nizet, 1964, in A. S. 16 (1965), pp. 558-561.

6 I think that we should refer back to Robert A. Hall, Jr., "Some Recent Developments in American Linguistics," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, LXX (1969), pp. 192-227, which includes Chomsky's position. Eric Buyssens's contribution in Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, Vol. XLVII (1969), No. 3, should be considered, as well as Françoise Dubois-Charlier's article, "La sémantique générative: une nouvelle théorie linguistique," in Langages (September, 1972), rejecting the notions of deep structure and sous-jacence.

7 We should comment on the forerunner to Lucien Tesnière, who in 1963 published Esquisse d'une syntaxe structurale, Paris, Klincksieck, and whose complete works appeared after his premature death, under the title of Eléments de syntaxe structurale, Paris, Klincksieck, 1959, with an introduction by Jean Fourquet. He called the angles stemmas, after a term used by ancient scholars in the classification of manuscripts. The apex of the angles were for him joints, indicating verbs whose role he overrated.

8 Chomsky, who more than once has changed his directions and theory, and of whom informed persons now claim that the specifically physiological position will be developed in his next university courses.

9 See Nicolas Ruwet, Introduction à la grammaire générative, Paris, Plon, 1967, and the review included in my article, "Sur les discussions actuelles en linguistique," in La Nouvelle Critique, No. 27 (October, 1969), pp. 51-52.

10 Marcel Cohen, "Quelques considérations sur language et pensée," in Mélanges Marcel Cohen, Mouton, 1970, pp. 29-35.

11 For these, see Manuel d'ethnographie by Marcel Mauss, Paris, Payot, 1947. I do not give any references for animal training, specifically birds who must learn to fly and sing. These multiply with the studies of the thousands of facts which are in danger of not ever being clarified, along with the different feats successfully performed by bees in the course of a life span of some weeks.