Two challenges for ‘neo-sassurean’ approaches to morphosyntax

Abstract

More than one hundred years after his death, the ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure have come back into vogue among theoretical linguists. The most ambitious Neo-Saussurean approach to grammar is the Sign Theory of Language (STL), developed by Denis Bouchard in his 2013 book The Nature and Origin of Language. The basic premise of STL is that ‘Language is the way it is because the conceptual and perceptual substances are the way they are’. I raise some issues around the STL that need to be addressed by this theory, in particular by pointing to two types of morphosyntactic generalizations that do not appear to be sign-based. I conclude with some speculations on the extent to which STL would have to be weakened in order to accommodate these problematic cases.