#trubetzkoy

On December 22, 1926 Trubetzkoy answered me with one of his most significant messages: [...] The general outlines of the history of language, when one reflects upon them with a little attention and logic, never prove to be fortuitous. [...] If Saussure did not dare to draw the logical conclusion from his own thesis that language is a system, this was due in large measure to the fact that such a conclusion would have contradicted the widely accepted notion of the history of language, and of history in general. For the only accepted sense of history is the notorious one of 'progress', that queer concept which as a consequence reduces 'sense' to 'nonsense'.