2. Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure was born on the 26th of
November 1857 into a family of well known scientists and died
on the 22nd February 1913 and was a Swiss linguist and
semiotician.
Ferdinand showed signs of talent and intellectual ability at the
age of 14 and after a year of studying Latin, Ancient Greek and
Sanskrit, he took a variety of courses at the University of Geneva
and commenced to graduate work at the University of Leipzig in
1876.
3. Ferdinand was one of two major founders of semiotics.
He believed that signs and symbols were an important
part of communications and they were different from
language.
4. At the age of 21 he published a book called Mémoire sur le système
primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (Dissertation
(Dissertation on the PrimitiveVowel System in Indo-European
European Languages).
In 1916 two of his former students Charles Bally and Albert
Sechehaye published Ferdinands most influential work the Cours de
linguistique générale (Course of General Linguistics).
5. I think his theory is important as it has made an
impact on modern linguistics and his theories are
used as a reference to him.
