un tableau périodique des structures linguistiques

à ajouter au sujet de l'orgueil structuraliste :

"Une machine recevant des équations déterminant les divers types de structures connues en phonologie, le répertoire des sons que l’appareil phonateur de l’homme peut émettre, et les plus petits seuils différentiels entre ces sons, déterminés préalablement par des méthodes psycho-physiologiques (sur la base d’un inventaire et d’une analyse des phonèmes les plus rapprochés), pourrait fournir un tableau exhaustif des structures phonologiques à n oppositions (n pouvant être fixé aussi grand qu’on voudrait). Ainsi obtiendrait-on une sorte de tableau périodique des structures linguistiques, comparable à celui des éléments dont la chimie moderne est redevable à Mendeleeff. Nous n’aurions plus alors qu’à repérer dans le tableau l’emplacement des langues déjà étudiées, à marquer la position, et les relations aux autres langues, de celles dont l’étude directe est encore insuffisante pour nous en donner une connaissance théorique, et même à découvrir l’emplacement de langues disparues, futures, ou simplement possibles. "


Claude Lévi-Strauss, " Langage et société " (1951), in Anthropologie structurale, Plon, Paris, 1958, p. 73

The Grammarian and his Language

"But it is not absurd to say that there is nothing in the formal pecularities of Hottentot or of Eskimo which would obscure the clarity or hide the depth of Kant’s thought – indeed, it may be suspected that the highly synthetic and periodic structure of Eskimo would more easily bear the weight of Kant’s terminology than his native German"

Nous traduisons :
" Mais il n’est pas absurde de dire qu’il n’y a rien dans les particularités formelles de l’hottentot ou de l’eskimo qui pourrait obscurcir la clarté ou cacher la profondeur de la pensée de Kant – en fait, on pourra suspecter que la structure hautement synthétique et périodique de l’eskimo porterait plus facilement le poids de la terminologie de Kant que son allemand natif. "

Edward Sapir, " The grammarian and his language ", in American Mercury, I, 1924. Repris dans le volume Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language Culture Personality, edited by David G. Mandelbaum, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963, p. 153.

Franz Boas, "Unconscious Character of Linguistic Phenomena"

"Of greater positive importance is the question of the relation of the unconscious character of linguistic phenomena to the more conscious ethnological phenomena. It seems to my mind that this contrast is only apparent, and that the very fact of the unconsciousness of linguistic processes helps us to gain a clearer understanding of the ethnological phenomena, a point the importance of which can not be underated. It has been mentioned before that in all languages certain classifications of concepts occur. To mention only a few : we find objects classified according to sex, or as animate and inanimate, or according to form. We find actions determined according to time and place, etc. The behavior of primitive man makes it perfectly clear that all these concepts, although they are in constant use, have never risen into consciousness, and that consequently their origin must be sought, not in rational, but in entirely unconscious, we may perhaps say instinctive, processes of the mind. They must be due to a grouping of sense-impressions and of concepts which is not in any sense of the term voluntary, but which develops from quite different psychological causes. It would seem that the essential difference between linguistic phenomena and other ethnological phenomena is, that the linguistic classifications never rise into consciousness, while in other ethnological phenomena, although the same unconscious origin prevails, these often rise into consciousness, and thus give rise to secondary reasoning and re-interpretations ".

Franz Boas, Introduction to Handbook of American Indian Languages, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln end London, 1966 p. 63. Le texte paraît à l’origine en 1911 dans le Bulletin, 40, du Bureau of American Ethnology