BACKGROUND OF THE LINGUISTIC THEORIES (ESPECIALLY OF THE SIGN) IN FERDINAND DE SAUSURRE: FROM CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY TO THE XIX CENTURY

In this study, it is our objective to carry out a historical tour of themain antecedents that we can find on the linguistic theories in Ferdinand deSaussure, with special emphasis on the influences he took for theelaboration of his theory of the sign. To do this, given the philosophicalrationalist nature that supports his theoretical conceptions, we are going tostudy the hypotheses preceding his, which had a logical-speculative nature.In this sense, we will start with Classical Antiquity focusing on thecontributions made by the main Greek philosophers (Socrates, Platon andAristotle) on the language / thought duality and the origin motivated or notof linguistic signs. Next, we will address the medieval theories ofscholasticism and its conception of language as a syntactic andparadigmatic system in which agreement and rection were of fundamentalimportance, as Saussure would explain centuries later, categorizinglanguage as a formal and functional system.Next, we will carry out an overview of the rationalist linguistic thought conceived by El Brocense in the16th century and made explicit in his Minerva. From him, Saussure would take the conception that reasonwas above any use or linguistic norm that tried to limit language. Later, already located in the seventeenthcentury, we will study the general and reasoned Grammar of Port-Royal and its influence on Ferdinandde Saussure, especially with regard to the conception of the two faces of the linguistic sign (meaning andsignifier). Finally, we will review some of the late nineteenth century theories that influenced Saussureand that were basically those conceived by the Kazan and Moscow schools and by the thought of theAmerican linguist W. D. Whitney. Finally, we will expose some of the fundamental concepts containedin Ferdinand de Saussure's General Linguistics Course in which he presented his linguistic theories