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Ferdinand de Saussure: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from Ferdinand de Saussure, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• A linguist predicted a sound no one had heard — then it was found in Hittite

  In 1879 Ferdinand de Saussure noticed odd vowel patterns in Indo-European languages and proposed lost consonant sounds to explain them, sounds that existed in no known language. In…

  — Ferdinand de Saussure; Jerzy Kurylowicz, Laryngeal theory (confirmed by Kurylowicz, 'e indo-europeen et h hittite')

• There's no reason 'dog' means dog — Saussure said that's true of every word

  Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure argued that the link between a word (the 'signifier') and what it refers to (the 'signified') is entirely arbitrary — nothing about the sound 'dog' r…

  — Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics

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