death_place death_date birth_place nationality birth_date article_title name occupation
paris , france 3 october 1976 -lrb- aged 74 -rrb- aleppo , ottoman empire french 27 may 1902 Émile benveniste
 Émile benveniste linguist
Émile benveniste

Émile benveniste -lrb- ; 27 may 1902 -- 3 october 1976 -rrb- was a french structural linguist and semiotician .
he is best known for his work on indo-european languages and his expansion of the linguistic paradigm established by ferdinand de saussure .
initially studying under antoine meillet , a former student of saussure , at the sorbonne , he began teaching at the École pratique des hautes Études and was elected to the collège de france a decade later in 1937 as professor of linguistics .
by this time he had already begun his investigation into the status of names within the history of indo-european linguistic forms .
he held his seat at the collège de france until 1969 when he retired due to deteriorating health .
however , he served as the first president of the international association for semiotic studies from 1969 to 1972 .
benveniste was born in aleppo , aleppo vilayet , ottoman syria .
at the start of his career , his highly specialised and technical work limited his influence to a small circle of scholars .
the publication of his monumental text , `` problèmes de linguistique générale '' or `` problems in general linguistics '' , would elevate his position to much wider recognition .
the two volumes of this work appeared in 1966 and 1974 respectively .
the book exhibits not only scientific rigour but also a lucid style accessible to the layman , consisting of various writings culled from a period of more than twenty-five years .
in chapter 5 , `` animal communication and human language '' , benveniste refutes behaviourist linguistic interpretations by demonstrating that human speech , unlike the so-called languages of bees and other animals , can not be merely reduced to a stimulus-response system .
the i -- you polarity is another important development explored in the text .
the third person acts under the conditions of possibility of this polarity between the first and second persons .
narration and description illustrate this . ''
`` i '' signifies `` the person who is uttering the present instance of the discourse containing `` i '' . ''
this instance is unique by definition and has validity only in its uniqueness ... `` i '' can only be identified by the instance of discourse that contains it and by that alone . ''
`` you '' , on the other hand , is defined in this way : `` by introducing the situation of `` address , '' we obtain a symmetrical definition for `` you '' as `` the individual spoken to in the present instance of discourse containing the linguistic instance of `` you '' . ''
these definitions refer to `` i '' and `` you '' as a category of language and are related to their position in language . ''
-- from `` problems in general linguistics '' a pivotal concept in benveniste 's work is the distinction between the '' énoncé '' and the '' énonciation '' , which grew out of his study on pronouns .
the '' énoncé '' is the statement independent of context , whereas the '' énonciation '' is the act of stating as tied to context .
in essence , this distinction moved benveniste to see language itself as a `` discursive instance '' , i.e. , fundamentally as discourse .
this discourse is , in turn , the actual utilisation , the very enactment , of language .
one of the founders of structuralism , roland barthes , attended benveniste 's seminars at École pratique .
pierre bourdieu was instrumental in publishing benveniste 's other major work , `` vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes '' in his series `` le sens commun '' at radical publisher les Éditions de minuit -lrb- 1969 -rrb- .
the title is misleading : it is not a `` vocabulary '' , but rather a comprehensive and comparative analysis of key social behaviors and institutions across germanic , romance-speaking , greco-roman , and indo-iranian cultures , using the words -lrb- `` vocables '' -rrb- that denote them as points of entry .
it makes use of philology , anthropology , phenomenology and sociology .
a number of contemporary french philosophers -lrb- e.g. , barbara cassin , nicole loraux , philippe-joseph salazar , françois jullien , marc crépon -rrb- have often referred to benveniste 's `` vocabulaire '' and are inspired by his methodology and the distinction he draws between meaning -lrb- `` signification '' -rrb- and what is referred to -lrb- `` désignation '' -rrb- .
jacques derrida 's famous work on `` hospitality , the other , the enemy '' is an explicit `` gloss '' on benveniste 's ground-breaking study of host/hostility/hospitality in the `` vocabulary '' -lrb- chapter 7 -rrb- -lrb- jacques derrida , `` on hospitality '' , 2000 -rrb- .
benveniste died in paris , aged 74 .
