La sémiologie saussurienne – source d’inspiration pour le “cognitif” en sémantique ?
La sémiologie saussurienne – source d’inspiration pour le “cognitif” en sémantique ?

Summary/Abstract: Our hypothesis is that Saussure's contribution to the introduction of the "cognitive" approach to semantics is much more significant than we thought. Nevertheless, before we bring justifications in support of our claim, we provide not only some preliminary remarks in order to avoid confusion between some key notions but also the historical context related to the origin of cognitive semantics. Most linguists generally agree that it was the semantic breach or the moment of rupture within transformational semantics, largely attributed to Katz and Fodor that led to the advent of cognitive semantics. In fact, following this split, adepts of generative semantics such as Langacker and Lakoff will come together under the same roof, namely cognitive linguistics. This new discipline takes a psychological perspective on language and attaches more importance to meaning-oriented studies. Then, we focus entirely on supporting our main hypothesis through the necessary justifications. We look first at Saussure’s notion of “signifié”, which is the reflection of a psychological view on language and at how it was adopted and adapted in cognitive semantics, namely in theories on lexical meaning. Then, we dwell into Saussure’s opinion according to which the study of language should always take into account the social component of life and that "language is not a single reflection of reality, but rather serves to construct it" (Chandler 28). This other main saussurean postulate, known as "langue- parole" is identical to a series of guiding principles in cognitive semantics. Therefore, there is undeniable proof that Saussure, through his two main postulates, namely "signifié/signifiant" and "langue- parole" greatly influenced the birth of various theories of cognitive semantics.

• Details
• Contents