Language and Life

Author: Charles Bally (France)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-10-01
Features: Language and Life comprehensively and profoundly presents Saussure's linguistic sign theory from the perspectives of arbitrariness and non-arbitrariness, linear and nonlinear relationships, analytical and synthetic forms. On this basis, it argues the conflicts, contradictions, oppositions, and mutual influences and interactions between internal elements of the linguistic system, including latent and manifest sentences, monolexemes and polylexemes, congruence and government, and the behaviorization of sentences, etc. From this, it concludes that the linguistic system is a unity of contradictions and oppositions, rather than a harmonious unity. It first proposes using the concept of substitution to explain grammatical relations and lexical categories, thereby highlighting the essence of linguistic sign relationships in horizontal combination and the non-linear ties between symbols. The functions of language and the evolution of the speech system are given a general explanation. Language and Life presents the core ideas and research methods of modern linguistics.