De Saussure, Ferdinand

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was professor at the University of Geneva (1901-13). Memoire sur le systeme primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-europeennes was published in 1879 but his Cours de linguistique generale was posthumously compiled from his students' lecture notes and did not
appear until 1916. "It became," wrote Giulio Lepschy, "arguably the most influential work of linguistics of the twentieth century, and can be considered the foundation stone of structuralism."
Simon Bouquet is President of the Institut Ferdinand de Saussure in Switzerland. He is a researcher at...