Albert Sechehaye

Albert Sechehaye (born July 4, 1870 in Geneva ; † July 2, 1946 ibid) was a Swiss linguist and belonged to the Saussurian Geneva School of Structuralism . Sechehaye was also involved in the edition of Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale .

Life

Sechehaye was a student at the University of Geneva , where he was taught by Ferdinand de Saussure from 1891 . He was an intern in Göttingen (1893-1902), where he is a German-language thesis on the French subjunctive in past tense wrote (a special time form of the French language, which is not used today anymore). After his internship, he settled in Geneva , where he stayed until his death. In 1906 he married the psychoanalyst Marguerite Burdet . It was not until 1939 that he became a professor, succeeding Charles Bally .

Saussure student or teacher?

Sechehaye is Saussure's best-known student and, together with Bally, editor of his great work Cours de linguistique générale from 1916. The role of the students in the creation of this classic was important, because some ideas of the CLG are missing in the manuscripts of Saussure and need to be followed up whose death must have been inserted by the authors (Saussure died in 1913).

However, Sechehaye had published a book as early as 1908 that contained some structuralist ideas and a program of synchronous linguistics and phonology . This work was known to Saussure, who also used it in his lectures after 1909. Although some ideas, developed simultaneously by Sechehaye and Saussure, achieved international renown as the works of the latter, for a long time Sechehaye was more or less involuntarily hidden in the shadow of his teacher and remained unknown. Peter Wunderli even sees Saussure as “a student of the Sechehaye”. This is an exaggeration, but its role in designing structuralism cannot be neglected.

Linguistic ideas

The work Program et méthodes de la linguistique théorique from 1908 was the first text published by Sechehaye after his German essay and was dedicated to Saussure. He advocates the thesis of a linguistics of law that opposes the linguistics of facts of that epoch. According to Sechehaye, the linguistics of law is timeless and universal, while the linguistics of facts is dependent on the history of language, especially phonetics . He divides the areas of a language into “static” and “dynamic” (or “evolutionary”) parts. The "static" parts are the primary components of language because they are not influenced by evolution.

Sechehaye represented ideas of the origins and changes in languages, he proposed a quasi- algebraic phonology and dealt with the language without proper grammar (such as that of children). He recommended psychological research into the phenomena of language.

His second work, Essai sur la structure logique de phrase, from 1926, focused on syntax and its logical types. In his writings from 1920–1940 he specified the concept of Saussure and wanted a “linguistics of organized language”.

Works

• The imperfecti subjunctive and its competitors in the normal hypothetical sentence structures in French. In: Romanische Forschungen , Volume XIX, No. 2, 1905.
• Programs et méthodes de la linguistique théorique. Psychology you speak. Champion, Paris 1908.
• Eléments de grammaire historique du français. Eggimann, Genève 1909.
• The method constructive en syntaxe. In: Revue des langues romanes. Band LIX, Montpellier 1916.
• Essai on the structure logique de la phrase. In: Collection linguistique publiée par la SLP , XX. Champion, Paris 1926.
• L'école genevoise de linguistique générale. In: Indo-European Research , Volume 44, 1927.
• Les trois linguistiques saussuriennes. In: Vox Romanica , Volume V., Zurich 1940.

literature

• Anne-Marguerite Frýba-Reber: Sechehaye et la syntaxe imaginative. Geneva 1994.
• Anne-Marguerite Frýba-Reber: Charles-Albert Sechehaye, un linguiste engagé. In: Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure , 49, 1995/96, pp. 123-137.