Re: vive !

Robbie writes concerning Saussurean linguistics,

"An added complexity is the onomatopoetic words, of which there are probably
more than most of us expect."

Actually, Saussure himself writes at some length about this "complexity" and,
yes, Derrida deals in a number of places with it as well. For his most
interesting discussion concerning this, see pages 91 thru 94 of the English
translation of *Glas*. Here Derrida cites Saussure's work:

"1.) Onomatopeias might be used to prove that the choice of the signifier is
not always arbitrary. But they are never organic elements of a linguistic
system. Besides, their number is much smaller than is generally supposed.
Words like French *fouet* 'whip' or *glas* 'knell' may strike certain ears
with suggestive sonority, but to see that they have not always had this
character we need only to go back to their Latin forms (*fuet* is derived
from *fagus*, 'beech-tree', *glas* = *classicum*). The quality of their
present sounds, or rather the quality that is attributed to them, is a
fortuitous result of phonetic evolution.

"And for authentic onomotopoeias (e.g. *glou-glou*, *tic-tac*, etc.), not
only are they limited in number, but also they are already chosen somewhat
arbitrarily, for they only approximate and are already more or less
conventional imitations of certain noises (compare the French *ouaoua* and
the German *wauwau*) In addition, once these words have been introduced to
the language, they are to a certain extent drawn into the same evolution --
phonetic, morphological, etc. -- that other words undergo (cf *pigeon*, from
Vulgar Latin *pipio*, itself derived from an onomotopoeia): obvious proof
that they lose something of their original character in order to assume that
of the linguistic sign in general, which is unmotivated."

That's Saussure, of course. Derrida goes on to tighten this reading up a bit
over the next five pages of the Genet column in *Glas*. It's worth reading
if anyone truly believes that such terms pose the problem for the system as
Jim describe it that Robbie suggests.

Also, it should be noted that in fact authentic onomotopoetic terms *do* vary
quite a bit from language to language. One of the easiest ways to see this is
to learn what animals say in different languages. Dogs and roosters, for
instance, say rather different things as you go from country to country.
This suggests that even these terms derive their significance from within the
specific system of which they are a part and not strictly from their
relationship to any objective, external world.

All the best,

--John

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Received on Sun Dec 15 08:16:16 2002