Summary
The Columbia School of Linguistics traces its origins through André Martinet and others back to Ferdinand de Saussure, the founder of modern linguistics. Like Saussure, CSL considers a language to be a kind of system “où tout se tient” (where everything depends on or influences everything else). But CSL differs from Saussure and his followers in its interest in substance as well as in form. Saussure emphatically denied the relevance of the physical media (vocal tract, sound) through which language functions, claiming that language consists of nothing but differences. But CSL linguists make a practice of explaining the arrangement of various forms (/g/, red barn vs. barn red) through their related substances (air chambers, difference in meaning). Ironically, CSL researchers set as their goal what other linguists postulate -- but do not explain how -- children do as they acquire their first language, that is, they analyze the undifferentiated mass of linguistic input actually produced by people. Rather than marveling at the infinitude of possible sentences that could be produced by an algorithm, CSL linguists wonder at the remarkable skill that humans have in employing a limited number of physical resources and meanings to produce a myriad of messages appropriate for a myriad of situations.
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