Neogrammarian Ferdinand: A Natural Hermeneutics of Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes
Neogrammarian Ferdinand: A Natural Hermeneutics of Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes

Summary/Abstract: While “de Saussure” is in fact THE name that has always been automatically brought upat any mention of “linguistics” and “semiotics”, that scholar might be nevertheless the mostenigmatic and tantalizing persona in the history of linguistics. In retrospective, wheneverthere was a question of criticizing de Saussure, he was referred to as a Neogrammarian, andwhenever the aim was to praise him – as a structuralist [Jankowsky 1972: 185]. Followinge.g. Percival [1981], Jakobson [1973] or Koerner [e.g. 1989], this paper challenges the usually taken for granted view that it was de Saussure who founded modern linguistics and takesan alternative look on de Saussure’s oeuvre from the point of view of the Neogrammarianschool. Through a personal hermeneutic reading of the only book that de Saussure publishedand approved for publication (Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les languesindo-européennes, 1879), I will argue that de Saussure’s monograph, within the ambit ofepistemological premises, is a mutiny on many levels against the phonological world of histimes. In this way, the discussion contributes to a larger project pointing to misapprehensionsin Neogrammarian achievements, which are assumed to ensue from the contemporaryemphasis on the revolutionary aspects of linguistic paradigms over their evolutionarydevelopment [cf. also Pociechina 2009; Kiklewicz 2007, 2014].

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