La notion de ‘sentiment’, la morphologie et la cognition langagière (in-)consciente

The notion of ‘sentiment’ can be viewed as a key to an account of saussurean synchronic linguistics as a form of cognitive morphology (not to be confused with the cognitivist paradigm). A sketchy analysis of Saussure’s psychological lexicon helps us to show that a throughout look to the particular kind of consciousness and will (somehow hidden, but not absent) proper to himself as a speaking subject is the necessary way for the linguist to proceed in his work. It doesn’t mean, anyway, that there is no place for the “objective” perspective, which sees la langue as a complex abstract object, regardless of the speakers.