i'm surprised how much of the material is covered in just 5 minutes. hope to see more. maybe bloomfield's take on saussure, and then zellig, and so on. :D maybe i'm being too greedy.
Thank you very much, but the way you are talking is like you are addressing your speech only to native speakers .. I have found difficulties hearing many terms and concepts.
From my experience of learning linguistics (from Saussure) I found that the signifier is not a phisycal sound but a sound image in our brain (the brain thinks through words). In this video the signifier reffers to (the sound of the letters, it should be specified that (the sound) is not a phonetical one but something else). I find this video interesting though. (sorry for my english, I'm not a native english speaker.)
hmmm! same. I think chomsky makes it clear,. signifier could be held to be lower than mere utterances, something general, like I-language representation that's then externalized into utterances(both sound & text of 'cat' being separate). but then, there's another trouble of having multiple such internal representations & the whole affair quickly gets psychological.
Oh my, loved it! It has helped me a lot since I'm attending Portuguese as a major course at college. I've found the video very simple and well explained, thanks a lot.
Shouldn't it be: Language is a highly "dynamic" system? There is of course a difference of staticdynamicity between content and functional words or phonotactic constrains and productivity. Grammar in a sense of "Langue", but Mental Lexicon/s is/are probably more in a sence of "Parole".
Seems like a complete waste of time, and the waste of thousands upon thousands of scholars that came after him, to study language by the merits of language. It would be like studying a rock for its rockness. How would Ferdinand de Sassure explain poetry or a hip-hop rhyme? Is not Wittgensteins attitude towards language that language is what language does? Here, I will make an example of the power of creativity: I hate when youtube videos disable their comments. I cant find good reason that outweighs the benefits of having an open conversation going. Yet, I cannot say that to an uploader when the comment section is disabled. So, I point it out in this comment section instead in order to try to capture peoples imaginations and to make them adopt the same attitude as me. My personal solution is to make a rule where I dislike every youtube video that has their comment section disabled. This will have no effect unless I persuade others to make the same personal rule for themselves. By sketching out these relations I may be able to affect the system (the communal-attentional-thought collective of sorts in a youtube videos viewership) by affecting another such system and its users. This is analogous to how the language is affected by its users and not the other way around -- if you dont have language, the users will still try to have a say in the conditions of existence if the community that they are participating in.
I don’t see how anyone could argue that you can’t have a thought or mental image or idea without a signifier or word. That part seems preposterous. It’s true that you can’t very well _communicate_ an idea without a word (or combination of words) or sign (or combination of signs) for it. But it is obvious that we have many ideas, thoughts, and mental images without any such sign. It is even obvious to me that the majority of our thoughts are of this kind. So there are many more ideas and thoughts than there are signifiers. In order to have a shared sign at all, it has to be assigned to a thought that people can share. Obviously, two people can behold the same cat or touch or otherwise sense the same cat. So the sign - sound “cat” makes perfect sense to everyone. Other concepts can not be referred to that way, because they cannot be seen or sensed directly. For example, a cat has some force that imparts animation to it, which is why we call it an “animal”. Whatever that force is, we can not see it. But certainly, we can see breathing. So we take the Latin name for “breath” and we use it to name that force that imparts animation to a thing. The “spiritus”, the “breath”. We use the language of the shared observation to describe the phenomenon that is not a shared observation. Much of the cleverness of language lies in that ability. In other experiences, no such word is adequate, and for that reason, we have many other art forms. Literature is one, which uses words, but music and visual art do the same thing without words. As do actions. In fact, if words were able to communicate those internal experiences, we would not have those art forms.
I have one objection. In Part 2 Chapter 1 of the Course in General Linguistics, the Open Court Publication, it states " In practice, a linguistic state occupies not a point in time, but a period of time of varying length, during which the sum total of changes occurring is minimal. It may be ten years, a generation, a century, or even longer. A language may hardly change at all for a long period, only to undergo considerable changes in the next few years." (pg. 99) "One could likewise say that static linguistics is also in this sense concerned with epochs; but the term state is preferable. The beginning and end of an epoch are usually marked by some more or less sudden upheaval which tends to alter the established order. The term state avoids the suggestion that anything like that occurs in a language." (Pg. 100) "So the notion of a linguistic state can only be an approximation." (Pg. 100) My critique is minor in the fact that the video states that synchronic study only occurs at one point in time. Again this detail is minor, but the synchronic structure should be based upon not only a state of time which little alteration occurs, but then comes into play with diachrony slightly just by design. What does that mean? In mathematics they have summations, and where this connects with linguistics are these states in time where the words remain the same to which we can add them up in order to not only determine the etymology of the word, the gymnastics of the linguistic world, but to see the phonological changes (and possibly more) which caused this shift in language. So, my basic critique is the unexplored idea of what synchrony is and can be.
I'm confused about "language is structural, thereby freeing it from associations, be they social, cultural, political, historical" and then you say "linguistic objects meaning is understood through its contrast with other objects". Can something be free of associations and at the same time contrast with others? What is meant by association here? I, for example, associate the word monarchy in opposition with republic; the word gentlemen and its contrast with peers and commoners. These things are at the same time associations and contrasts, that's why I'm confused.
And another couplet from my own cranium: If, sans language, regulating thought would impossible, Saussure asserted so knowing music is free but in the suasible.
Ross the video is helpful, even though may be because my internet connectivity isn't that good, making it difficult for me to view the full scene, some concepts are not clearly understood. however, am catching up with the topic. thanks so much.
I was taught that Saussure never talked about "structure / structural" (4min47s), instead he used the word "system". His students later used the word structure to talk about his work. Can you confirm?
LOved. I learn a lot from videos like these, i like the voice explaining and behind the photos and text and the movment. Thank very much for posting it
we have to read this in our college and now this chapter is running...i learn something from this thanks for that... but still i dont know more things. and please upload more videos if u have of this subject
If you've ever learned another language, you sometimes come across words and phrases that do not have an exact translation in our own language. What does that mean for Sassure's notion that there is no signified without a signifier, especially in terms of translating terms for something more abstract?
absolutely perfect , this was a perfect books that i was read and it has contains the important things of knowledge in linguistics, the others topics i want was pragmatics from JL. Austins
