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Social and Linguistic Structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Marcel Cohen

Extract

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“Language is eminently a social phenomenon.” From the outset one should expect an interdependence of linguistic and social phenomena, as well as extremely complex relationships of action and reaction. In such matters, oversimplification can only lead to a dead end. On the other hand, a criticism of data that respects their true nature within the framework of their extreme complexity can pave the way for researches from which one may expect solid results so far as future progress is concerned. These researches are necessarily bound up with linguistics (the first human science which, while still very young, assumed a rigorous form), with psychology (better and better equipped and yet disarmed in the face of so many problems), and with sociology, that latecomer in developing well-based techniques, whose theorists still confront each other with diverse points of view.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 4 , Issue 15 , September 1956 , pp. 38 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © 1956 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1. A. Meillet's preface in L'Etat actuel des Etudes de Linguistique générale, opening lecture. Collège de France, Feb. 1906; reprinted in Linguistique historique et Linguistique générale 1921 (2d ed., 1926; new ed., 1948), p. 16.

2. "Linguistique et Sociologie," Cahiers internationaux de Sociologie, July-Dec., 1955.

3. P. W. Schmidt, Die Sprachfamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde (Heidelberg, 1926), see in particular pp. 464-65. Review by Marcel Cohen in Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique, Vol. 28, No. 84, 1928, pp. 10-21.

4. Columbia University Slavic Languages, The Soviet Linguistic Controversy (New York, Kings Crown Press, 1951); Stalin, A Propos du Marxisme en Linguistique (Paris, 1951).

5. A. Meillet, Esquisse d'une Histoire de la Langue latine (Ist ed.; Paris, Hachette, 1928; 3d ed., 1933), Conclusion.

6. Alf Sommerfelt, La Langue et la Société: Caractères sociaux d'une Langue de Type archaïque (Oslo, Aschehoug, 1938).

7. Langues du Monde (Ist ed., 1924), p. 443 (according to A. Thalheimer). Also see p. 428 on the functioning of "numbers" of categories in the same languages.

8. Langues du Monde (2d ed., 1952), p. 860.

9. Lilias Homburger, Les Préfixes nominaux dans les Parlers peul, haoussa et bantous (Paris, Institut d'ethnologie, 1929); Les Langues négro-africaines (Paris, Payot, 1941), especially pp. 232-34. Besides the African languages see particularly E. Benveniste, "Remarques sur la Classification nominale en Burusaski" (langue du nord d l'Inde), in Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique, Vol. 44 (1947-48).

10. E. Benveniste, "Tendances récentes en Linguistique général," Journal de Psychologie normale et pathologique, Jan.-June, 1954 (see especially p. 142 where, following the sentence cited in the text, the matter of "diffusions" is discussed).

11. Maxime Rodinson, "Ethnographie et Relativisme," Nouvelle Critique, No. 69, Nov., 1955.

12. A. Meillet, "Comment les Mots changent de Sens," Année sociologique, 1905-1906; reprinted in Linguistique historique et Linguistique générale.

13. Marcel Cohen, "Faits linguistiques et Faits de Pensée," Journal de Psychologie, 1947; reprinted in abridged form in Cinquante Années de Recherches, 1955.

14. Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, "L'Expression de la Possession dans les Langues mélanesiennes," Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique, XIX, 1916.

15. Marcel Cohen, "Aspect et Temps dans le Verbe," Journal de Psychologie, 1927 (with observations by A. Meillet).