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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Ferdinand de Saussure born (26/11/1857)
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2024 22:11:30 +1300
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Replaying from the 2018 Linguistic Birthdays thread:

November 26 - Ferdinand de Saussure (1857)
Known for two things, one from the beginning of his career
and the other from the end.

1878 - _Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues 
indo-européennes_ -- a brilliant internal reconstruction of the PIE
root system. Saussure postulated "coéfficients sonantiques" which
later proved to have been actual consonants -- the "laryngeal" theory
which is now IE orthodoxy.

1906-1911 - Lectures on general linguistics at the University of Geneva,
Compiled after his death by two colleagues into the _Cours de 
linguistique générale_ (1916). This certainly had an influence on 
structural linguists both in Europe and America. The 
synchronic/diachronic and langue/parole distinctions, and the emphasis 
on contrast, pointed the direction that linguistics would take in the 
20th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure