Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was professor at the University of Geneva (1901-13). Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes was published in 1879 but his Cours de linguistique générale was posthumously compiled from his students' lecture notes and did not appear until 1916. "It became," wrote Giulio Lepschy, "arguably the most influential work of linguistics of the twentieth century, and can be considered the foundation stone of structuralism."

Simon Bouquet is President of the Institut Ferdinand de Saussure in Switzerland. He is a researcher at the University of Berne and lectures at the University of Paris. He has made the manuscript texts of Saussure better known through critical editions: his and Rudolph Engler's edition of the Écrits de linguistique générale is frequently referred to in this volume.

Rudolf Engler (1930-2003) taught for many years at the University of Berne. He wrote prolifically on Saussure, making frequent contributions to the Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure. He is known for his comparative critical edition of the student notes for Saussure's lectures on general linguistics and for co-editing the Écrits de linguistique générale with Simon Bouquet.

Translators


Carol Sanders is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Surrey. She was the founding president of the Association for French Language Studies and has lectured in French at universities in Great Britain, Australia, and the West Indies. She is the editor of The French Language Today (1993), and the Cambridge Companion to Saussure (2004) both published by Cambridge University Press.

Matthew Pires is Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Franche-Comté, and a visiting lecturer at the University of London Institute in Paris. In addition to his work on Saussure, his research concerns sociolinguistic approaches to onomastics and address forms in writing.

Peter Figueroa studied philosophy in Italy, Belgium and France before doing a doctorate in sociology at the LSE. He was a Research Officer in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Oxford and has lectured at the Australian National University, the University of Southampton, and at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica.