Linguistic Figure: Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure

Do you know Ferdinand de Saussure? Do you ever heard about him? Or do you forget? Who is he? He is one of linguistic figures. So, let’s find out about him.

Ferdinand de Saussure was born in Geneva into a family of well-known scientists. He studied Sanskrit and comparative linguistics in Geneva, Paris, and Leipzig, where he fell in with the circle of young scholars known as the Neogrammarians. Brugmann, in particular, was his mentor, but he was also close to Karl Verner and others of the circle.

In 1878, at the age of 21, Saussure published a long and precocious paper called "Note on the Primitive System of the Indo-European Vowels". He explained in greater and clearer detail than others who were coming to similar conclusions how the PIE ablaut system worked.

One of the most inspired parts of his analysis is the positing of 'sonorant co-efficients', consonantal elements that do not appear in any daughter language but can be hypothesized due to the systematic way the vowels are affected in the descendent languages, and due to position and distribution of such elements in the rest of the PIE system. The great 20th century Indo-Europeanist Jerzy Kurylowicz later pointed out that Hittite, the last-discovered ancient Indo-European language, had consonants in just the positions predicted by Saussure's analysis. These consonants are now called laryngeals, and the study of laryngeals, bringing to bear more recent evidence than Saussure had access to, is still an important area of Indo-European studies.

That’s not all about Ferdinand de Saussure. There is more great experience that can inspirit and motivate peoples, especially students who majoring linguistic and literature department. We hope this bit of information can be useful for you all, thanks.

Sources:
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Found/saussurebio.html
http://pusatbahasaalazhar.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/ferdinand-de-saussure/#more-998