Benveniste et la représentation du sens : de l'arbitraire du signe à l'objet extra-linguistique

Abstract

The topic of this paper is to show how Benveniste's criticism of Saussure in the famous Nature du signe linguistique (1939), based on the Cours de linguistique générale, cannot be considered as pertinent refered to the original saussurian texts due to be published some decades later. This point is argued regarding as well the matter of arbitrariness and the question of extra-linguistic reference.