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THE LINGUISTICS STUDENT’S HANDBOOK 46
Saussure makes a number of other points about linguistic signs which have
become accepted, although they had not always been seen as obvious prior to
Saussure. Perhaps the most important of these is the fact that the linguistic sign
is arbitrary. There is no natural link between the sound sequence /piɡ/ and
particular animals. If there were, how could the same or very similar animals
be easily associated with the word pig in English, cochon in French, gris in
Danish, Schwein in German, and so on? Even onomatopoeic signs are to a large
extent conventional. We only have to think about the words we use to represent
animal noises in a number of languages to see that. Without knowing, it is hard
to guess what animal says gav-gav in Russian, or what animal says chu-chu in
Japanese. While the signs of sign-languages are often said to be iconic and
resemble some feature of what is denoted, it can be difficult there to guess what
a particular sign means if it has not been explained.
References
Chomsky, Noam (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Chomsky, Noam (1986). Knowledge of Language. New York: Praeger.
Coseriu, Eugenio (1962 [1952]). Sistema, norma y habla. In Eugenio Coseriu, Teoria
del lengaje y linguistica general. Madrid: Gredos, 11–113.
Saussure, Ferdinand de (1969 [1916]). Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot.