Historiographia Linguistica - Volume 1, Issue 1, 1974

Two contrasting attitudes towards the scientific study of language have been apparent from the earliest period of linguistic studies in Europe. The forms that the contrast has taken have varied from one era to another. In Greece the debate was between the claims of grammar to be a science (téchnè) the Middle Ages the scholastic speculative grammarians maintained that their theory of grammar embodied a superior level of adequacy over against the mere accurate record of observed fact provided by Priscian and the didactic grammarians. A similar opposition was seen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries between rationalist linguists, with their emphasis on linguistic universals and on the importance of 'general grammar', and the empiricists, who paid most attention to the individual differences of each language, to be accurately observed and independently classified. These continuing attitudes are still a matter of controversy today, and each has an essential place in the progress of linguistic science.

In this article the author elucidates the main aspects of Gustave Guillaume's (1883-1960) linguistic theory and demonstrates that, despite Guillaume's frequent references to the Cours, central portions of his system are quite distinct from Saussure's position. Apart from a number of other differences between the two, there are in particular two important components that receive special treatment, namely, G's attempt at introducing the dynamic aspect into the (synchronic) system of language, and the renunciation of the bilateral concept of the sign (signifié/signifiant) within langue. In an effort to avoid the essentially static conceptions of certain structuralist trends, G regards the content of individual signs as such as not actually existing. In his understanding, on this linguistic level, only a given series of programmes is entitled to be taken as an entity within which individual moneme-signifiers represent merely virtual positions. Whenever needed in actual linguistic expression, these programmes begin ab ovo with each speech-act and may be halted as the case may be by other co-existing and superimposed programmes with different functions. Actualization of these programmes always takes place within a certain minimal, albeit real, time span, the temps opératif. However, the semantic structures thus conceived frequently diverge from the 'semiological' or expression system, and, consequently, its individual constituents (signifiants) are ignored on the level of 'programmes'. In fact, it is only on the threshold between langue and discqurs that these signifiers are related to the contents generated within the framework of a given temps opératif, in order to form a sentence, the basic unit of discours.Taking Saussure's theory as a starting-point, Guillaume's linguistic argument is critically analyzed. In effect, it is shown that G misunderstood S frequently, to the extent that on some occasions it may appear that G knowingly misinterpreted S's doctrine in order to fit its components into his own, at times idiosyncratic, theoretical system.

It is the thesis of the paper that Urbain Domergue's (1745-1810) opposition, voiced during the years of the French Revolution, against Antoine Rivarol's (1753-1801) explanation of the Clarté française on the basis of the rationalist doctrine of 'natural' word order was not primarily motivated by Rivarol's negative attitude towards the Revolution. On the contrary, it is demonstrated that immediately after the appearance of Rivarol's Discours (1784) Domergue opposed Rivarol's theory of the 'natural' word order of French (advocating instead a sensualist position established by Condillac), and that Domergue's arguments put forward in 1799 were essentially those of 1785, though now with additions furnished by predominantly philosophical and political experiences made during the period of the Revolution. Domergue's reaction was in some way paralleled by Dominique-Joseph Garat (1749-1833) who took a similar stand on Rivarol's Discours in 1785.During the Revolution, Dominique-Joseph Garat held public office as a minister of justice under Robespierre and later as a leading representative of the Ideologists (i.e., adherents of Condillac's sensualist philosophy) and a member — like Domergue — of the 'Institut National des Sciences et des Arts', newly founded in 1795. Later, as for instance in the case of Louis de Bonald (1754-1840), a spiritual chief of the Restauration, the motivation behind a criticism of particular linguistic views took an opposite direction: He radically objected not only to the Ideologists' philosophy of language and mind but also, hardly less vigorously, to anything the Revolution might have meant. Instead, the rationalist conception of ordre naturel was reinstated as a reflection of a 'natural' social order.