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Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was a Swiss linguist and sanskritist, who excelled early in his career in Indo-European philology. A lecturer in linguistics at École des Hautes Études in Paris from 1881 to 1891. From  1901-1913 he was a professor of Indo-European linguistics and Sanskrit, and from 1907-1913 a professor General Linguistics at the University Geneva. The work he is most famous for, A Course in General Linguistics, was actually put together from his lecture notes by his students after his death. It is here we find his greatest influence.

Semiology - The science of signs and their meanings

A language is a complex of three systems:

phonology- the science of speech sounds including especially the history and theory of sound changes in a single language or in two or more related languages considered together for comparative purposes
concept - :something conceived in the mind :THOUGHT ,IDEA ,NOTION :as aphilosophy :a general or abstract idea :a universal notion: (1) :the resultant of a generalizing mental operation :a generic mental image abstracted from percepts; also :a directly intuited object of thought (2) :a theoretical construct <the concept of the atom> blogic (1) :an idea comprehending the essential attributes of a class or logical species :a universal term or expression or its meaning (2) :a propositional function, logical relation, or property c:an idea that includes all that is characteristically associated with or suggested by a term
grammer -a branch of linguistic study that deals with the classes of words, their inflections or other means of indicating relation to each other, and their functions and relations in the sentence as employed according to established usage and that is sometimes extended to include related matter such as phonology, prosody, language history, orthography, orthoepy, etymology, or semantics

 

The Sign
The union of a signifier and a signified.
The signifier :   a  sound image.
The signified : a mental concept

Two Types of Sign-relations

Syntagmatic  / Associative 

Syntagmatic Relations
"Words as used in discourse, strung together one after another, enter into relations based on the linear character of languages. . . . Combinations based on sequentiality may be called syntagmas. . . . In its place in a syntagma, any unit acquires its value simply in opposition to what precedes, or to what follows, or both."

Associative Relations
"Outside the context of discourse, words having something in common are associated together in the memory. In this way they form groups, the members of which may be related in various ways" 

 

Important Binary Oppositions in Saussure's Work

Langue / Parole
Langue: the abstract total system of a language at a given moment in its history.  For example, "the English language" today.  or "Middle High German."
Parole: The actual, concretely expresed language of an actual speaker. 

Example 1 : The difference between "The English language itself" and the form of English I am speaking right now, with my accent, my particular dialect traits, my relative command of the grammar, nuances of vocabulary, etc. 
Example 2: Middle High German as a system that can be reconstructed from the total extant texts written in the language is langue. The Middle High German of  Wolfram von Eschenbach and the Middle High German of Walter von der Vogelweide are two instances of parole

Synchronic / Diachronic

As used in terms of linguistics.
Synchronic: study of a system as it exists at one moment in time.
Diachronic: study of a system over a specific extent of time, or comparing a system from one period to that of one or more others 

Simply as two contemporary logics of order, meaning, and expression: http://www.d.umn.edu/~cstroupe/ideas/diachronic.html

Read a view that suggests these should not be opposing forces, but simply ends of a spectrum

An agreeing explanation by FoamyCustard.org

Form / Substance

The form is the abstract constant underlying or giving coherence to the particular instances of "substance." 

"The 8.45 from Geneva to Paris." two trains, one which leaves 24-hours later than the other one. the locomotive, the cars, the staff, are not the same. Yet we attitribute identity to the two trains. This is a synchronic identity or a 'form.'

 

 

1. The structure of this page, and some of its contents comes from Earl Jackson Jr.'s Lit 101 class website http://www.anotherscene.com/sempsych/spsaussure.html