Saussure’s Cours and the Monosyllabic Myth: the perception of Chinese in early linguistic theory

ABSTRACT Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale reproduced a misconception of Chinese as a monosyllabic language without complex words. In this paper, we investigate the sources of this misconception in Western thought. We also show that the misconception about Chinese was already known to be inaccurate in Saussure’s time, and that he had many missed opportunities to find out. While Saussure reproduced the empirical errors of Comparatists and Neogrammarians with respect to Chinese, he moved away from the cultural prejudices and attitudes that were behind their claims. This turn, we argue, illustrates an important aspect of the Saussurean scientific revolution, which was fuelled more by fundamental conceptual changes than by empirical discoveries.