What is a linguistic problem?

Abstract

This article examines the problem of the logically pre-Saussurian character of a chronologically post-Saussurian linguistics: structuralism. In this way, we try to show the radical difference between problematics separating the etiological Saussurean theory of language from its structuralist re-elaboration. The latter appears, by recurrence, to be “analytical”, and thus empirical. We then set out to highlight the issues at stake in the Saussurean concepts of system and value, namely the break with the common representation of language as an entity and the theorisation of the sound/meaning relationship constitutive of the sign and of
language. Finally, we close the text by proposing an explanation of this concealment of the Saussurean break through structuralism and a large part of later linguistics.
later linguistics.