Domenico Russo, Saussure according to his own words. A concordance to the Italian translation of Notes personnelles de Ferdinand de Saussure sur la linguistique générale. Roma, Aracne 2023, 1076 p. ISBN 979-12-218-0601-4, 47 € / 28,2 €
Notice de l’Éditeur, avec Table de matières et Introduction.
I publish here the concordances of the Scritti inediti di linguistica generale, the Italian translation of Notes personnelles de Ferdinand de Saussure sur la linguistique générale carried out by Tullio De Mauro. The reasons for this work are clear.
First of all, Ferdinand de Saussure is the first linguist who succeeded in elaborating a scientific theory of language as a human manifestation of the faculty of language. Secondly, Saussurian theory is the foundation of every other modern linguistic theory. Thirdly, Saussure never published the text that articulates his theory. Fourthly, and finally, Saussurian theory has always and almost exclusively been spread and studied using non-autograph sources, above all the edition of Cours de linguistique générale edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye with the collaboration of Albert Riedlinger and critiqued by Tullio De Mauro.While it is true that Saussure never published the text that articulates his theory, it is also true that he annotated it in the bundle of pages preserved by the Bibliothèque publique et universitaire de Genève and catalogued as the Notes personnelles de Ferdinand de Saussure sur la linguistique générale. This means that the Notes personnelles kept in Geneva are the only autographed text that articulates Saussurian linguistic theory. The Notes personnelles were transcribed as a full diplomatic edition by Rudolf Engler and this transcription is on the basis of the Italian translation, introduced and with commentary, carried out by Tullio De Mauro under the title Scritti inediti di linguistica generale. Thus, after the Notes personnelles and Rudolf Engler’s transcription, the work of De Mauro is the text in which Saussurian linguistic theory is articulated in the way that adheres most closely to Saussure’s thought.
Extrait de l’Introduction, p. IX.
