Saussure on Language and Thought
Saussure makes a distinction between langue and parole. Modern-day generative linguistics makes a similar distinction, though using different terms. What are the terms for this contemporary distinction.
"Generative" describes what the mind actually generates as opposed to what rules would say the outcome would be. It is along the lines of being more descriptive than prescriptive.
Given the Saussurean analysis presented for the relationship between' causa' in Latin and chose in modern French, what do your think he would say about the relationship between modern English dog and the modern German hund. Does it make sense to compare these two words? Why or why not?
Although other linguists of the 19th Century would have no problem developing a direct relationship between the Latin causa and the French chose, Saussure's configurations of language doesn't automatically allow the direct relationship. I don't think Saussure would see any relationhip between dog and hund except that as is written about arbre and tree: the dictionary says both words mean the same thing. It would seem in the light of Saussure's ideas about language as individual structures -- each language a separate structure -- that there would be no point to comparing the two words.
3) Certain meanings tend to be associated with similar phonological forms in a wide variety of languages. For example, ma means mother in English and (with the proper tone) Chinese. Do you think this a problem for Saussure's notion of arbitrariness? Why or why not?
3) No. By Saussure's various explanations and theories of language and langue, whatever the word, sound, parole is for mother or anything else is only significant within the framework of whatever language is being discussed. Because the same sound happens to re-occur in different languages and happens to mean the same thing in all of them would be outside the technicalities of langue itself.
