Saussure et l’origine du langage: un interdit à dépasser par la philosophie linguistique

Abstract

The question of the origin of language is becoming a purely biological thematics. Three distinct events can be considered as the main sources of the biologisation of this question, i.e. the mechanistic and materialistic interpretations of the Darwinian theory; the prohibition promulgated by the Société Linguistique de Paris in 1866; Saussurian linguistics.

In the Cours de linguistique générale, Saussure bans the question of the origin of language because of two impossibilities: an essential impossibility and a theoretical impossibility. The essential impossibility is a limitation of the domain of linguistics. Indeed, language is defined as a human fact, which is always inherited as a complete whole by every community of speakers. Language being a complete whole, its origin is out of the domain of linguistics. The theoretical impossibility is an admission of the incapacity of linguistics to resolve the problem of the origin of language. These two impossibilities, having the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign as their main cause, show that Saussurian linguistics is an instance of fixism and uniformitarism.

In this paper, I will explain these two impossibilities and argue for a new approach, between biologism and sociologism, of the origin of language.