Indo-European linguistics and general linguistics in Saussure's works: a continuous course through the manuscripts

The article concerns those passages of the manuscript from the Geneve library, i.e. Arch. de Saussure 378, which very clearly reveal the development of Saussure's thought on the one hand and his application of the comparative method to the formulation of his linguistic theory's principles on the other. Among the observations of historical linguistics, focused on the intonation of Lithuanian in relation with the Indo-European, there are scattered some theoretical remarks concerning "des oppositions ou des valeurs par contraste", the necessity of a negative definition of linguistic phenomena, and phonetics that "s'occupe de la relation d'une forme avec la meme forme a une epoque antecedente, ou avec la meme forme a une epoque subsequente". They are exactly those concepts that occur in the Course in general linguistics. Adapted from the source document