Language, «closed garden, sealed source». Saussure’s Course on General Linguistics, one hundred years later

Abstract

In the light of recent theories of the linguistic sign this article offers a new analysis of the Cours de linguistique générale. The study of language acquisition by children leads us to a reappraisal of two points of the Cours: the differential value of the linguistic sign, both in its paradigmatic and syntagmatic dimensions, and the synchronic character of language.