retour

Michelle BRAZÃO

Saussure and Lithuanian studies in the XIX century

Saussure and Lithuanian studies in the XIX century

The question about the way theorization of Lithuanian influenced Saussure's theoretical project is certainly important. Thus, it is necessary to observe how the Saussure's elaborations changed the perception that existed until the mid-1890s from observations on Lithuanian functioning.

Thinking about in a new suggest for the study of Lithuanian language, which starts from the stress and intonation of the language, arriving into in a language as a system, allows us to reflect on the question of how to analyze the theoretical object – the language – was presented at that time.

Therefore, the purpose of this paper lies in the analysis of the relationship that the linguists of the XIX century had with the Lithuanian and what level was Saussure's study about this language at the manuscript 3953. The main question go right over in fact that if it is possible to have a distinction between theorizations about Lithuanian referring to a written/ spoken language representation, from XIX century, to a language as a system, as Saussure suggest, at the manuscript mentioned above. Thus, our goal is to show how this change occurred in the Lithuanian language studies from the manuscript 3953, written by Saussure.

Apparently, in the study developed by scholars from that moment, for the most part, came from written/ spoken literary texts, such as the legends and popular songs, and, also, from dictionaries. They were used in order to find the familiarity between languages. Although these records are publications of the spoken form of the Lithuanian, the importance was in the language writing.


According Sljusareva (1971-1972, p. 7),

Il faut noter que dès 1825 environ jusqu'à 1850 et au début du XXe siècle ont été publiés de très nombreux textes de chansons populaires lituaniennes, et également toute sorte de textes représentant des parlers de diverses régions de la Lituanie. Toute cette matière a été mise à profit par les linguistes, même si parfois le manque d'unité dans la notation orthographique de la langue faisait difficulté, en particulier pour déterminer la place de l'accent et l'intonation.

Thus, in this paper, we intend to show the predominance of the written/ spoken Lithuanian language study, in the linguistic at XIX century, and how it became after Saussure's manuscript, 3953.



PETIT, D. Ferdinand de Saussure et la langue lituanienne. Ferdinand de Saussure. Baltistikos raštai, Travaux baltistiques. 2012. (pp.131-158).

______________ New Insights on Lithuanian Accentuation from the umpublished manuscripts of Ferndinand de Saussure (1857-1913). Baltic Linguistic. 2010. (pp.143-166).

______________; QUIJANO, C. M. Du nouveau à propôs Du Voyage F. de Saussure em Lituanie. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, 61. 2008-2009.

REDARD, G. A propôs du Voyage de F. de Saussure em Lituanie. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, 28. 1973. (pp.7-22).

SABALIUSKAS, A. La langue lituanienne vue par les linguistes français. Cahiers Lituaniens, 2. 2001 (p. 21–27).

SAUSSURE, F. 'Accentuation lituanienne'. In 'Papiers Ferdinand de Saussure' : Ms.fr. 3953. Bibliotèque de Genève. (s/d).

______________. Cours de Linguistique Générale - Édition critique preparé par Tulio de Mauro. Paris: Payot, 1967.

______________ Cours de Linguistique Générale. Édition critique par Rudolf Engler (Tome 1).Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1968.

______________ Deuexime Cours de Linguistique Générale (1908-1909): d'après les cahiers d'Emile Constantin / Saussure's second course of lectures on general linguistics (1910-1911): from the notebooks of Emile Constantin. French text edited by Eisuke Komatsu e English text edited by Roy Harris. Pergamon Press, 1993.

______________ Recueil des publications scientifiques, eds. Charles Bally and Léopold Gautier, Lausanne and Geneva: Payot, 1922, 641 pp.

SILVEIRA, E.; BRAZÃO, Michelle Landim. Saussure: entre o geral e o particular. In: Estudos Linguísticos. São Paulo, v. 43, n.1. p. 309-318, jan-abr 2014.

SLJUSAREVA, N. A. Lettres de Ferdinand de Saussure a J. Baudouin de Courtenay. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, 27. 1971 - 1972. (pp.7-17).



Résumé version PDF

Voir le fichier     Télécharger le fichier