What is Ferdinand de Saussure known for?

Ferdinand de Saussure (b. 1857–d. 1913, Geneva) is widely recognized as the founder of modern theoretical linguistics. … According to Saussure, signs of language are arbitrary, in the sense that the relation between their physical and symbolic distinction from each other has no other grounds but convention.

Ferdinand de Saussure, (born Nov. 26, 1857, Geneva, Switz. —died Feb. 22, 1913, Vufflens-le-Château), Swiss linguist whose ideas on structure in language laid the foundation for much of the approach to and progress of the linguistic sciences in the 20th century.

De Saussure’s contribution to modern linguistics was responsible for three key directions in the study of language. He distinguished between Synchrony and Diachrony, between langue and parole, between signified and signifier.

That name is Noam Chomsky…an American linguist, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, philosophy expert, and famously called the father of modern linguistics. Chomsky is associated with having shaped the face of contemporary linguistics with his language acquisition and innateness theories.

In Saussure, the previously undivided sign gets divided into the signifier (the sound image) and the signified (the concept). … Saussure stressed that the relationship between the signifier and the signified is conventional and arbitrary, and that both terms are psychological in nature.

Noun. 1. Saussure – Swiss linguist and expert in historical linguistics whose lectures laid the foundations for synchronic linguistics (1857-1913)

According to Saussure, any language is structured in the sense that its elements are interrelated in nonarbitrary, regular, rule-bound ways; a competent speaker of the language largely follows these rules without being aware of doing so.

1. langues-de-chat.
2. lah~gdəshah.

adjective. loud or shrill, as the quality of a voice. extremely cold or bitter: a piercing wind. appearing to gaze deeply or penetratingly into something: piercing eyes. perceptive or aware; acute: a piercing mind.