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Linguistics 457
Kruszewski; but in the Cours these notions were presented in a more perspicuous
and expanded manner, and an effective emphasis was placed on the mutual
solidarity of the system and its constituents, on their purely relative and opposi-
tive character, and on the basic antinomies which we face when we deal with
language. It must be added, however, that the factual analysis of linguistic
systems was a task passed on to the future researchers, and the elaboration of
the most appropriate methods for such an analysis has become a vital question
of linguistic theory and praxis for several decades.
The consistent attention focused upon the antinomies “qu’on rencontre dks
qu’on cherche B faire la thkorie du langage’ is one of the greatest assets of the
Cours. It was important to realize these dichotomies, but as long as they
remained unresolved, the wholeness and unity of linguistics was imperiled. In
Husserl’s terms, ‘Halbheiten oder unzulassige Verabsolutierungen von nur
relativ und abstraktiv berechtigten Einseitigkeiten’ had to be overcome, and
gradual efforts to bridge and synthesize these ‘inner dualities’ actually mark
the post-Saussurian stage of linguistics.
At the very end of his scientific activities, Saussure adopted the Stoic con-
ception of the twofold verbal sign composed of the perceptible signans and the
intelligible signaturn. He realized that these two elements are intimately united
‘et s’appellent l’un l’autre’, but taught that the bond between the signans and
signaturn is arbitrary and that ‘the whole system of language is based on the
irrational principle of the arbitrariness of the sign’. This assumption has been
submitted to a gradual revision whereby the role of relative, grammatical
motivation as invoked by Saussure to restrict the arbitrariness of the connection
between the two aspects of the verbal sign proved to be quite insufficient. Inner,
iconic ties of the signans to its signaturn and, in particular, intimate connections
between grammatical concepts and their phonological expression cast doubt on
the traditional belief in ‘the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign’, as maintained
in the Cours. In post-Saussurian linguistics the question of relationship between
the signans and signaturn has been extended also to the phonological aspect of
language, and the entangled questions of interplay between the phonological
and grammatical levels as well as of their mutual demarcation have come to
the foreground of linguistic attention. The essential difference between the
phonological oppositions which are rooted in the signans and the grammatical
oppositions founded in the signaturn has been apprehended.
‘The linearity of the signans’, which was decreed by Saussure to be a self-
evident fundamental principle fraught with incalculable consequences for the
science of language, has been shaken by the dissociation of phonemes into their
concurrent components (‘distinctive features’); and, on the other hand, the
question of the successive order in the structure of the signaturn regains the im-
portance it had in the classical age, and the increasing attention to the hierarchy
of immediate constituents has removed the shortcomings of the former,
straightforward approaches to the sequence. Saussure’s remarks on the irrele-
vance of the ‘substance’ in which the linguistic form is expressed and on the
arbitrariness of the relation between form and substance were put to the test,
and have finally yielded to a hierarchical view of primordial speech and its