ABSTRACT
This structuralist view has been enormously influential, and since the 1930s virtually all linguistic work has been carried out within the structuralist paradigm, with very considerable success. But the structuralist revolution brought with it a new puzzle: if a language is primarily an orderly system of relations, how is it that a language can change without disrupting that system? To put it another way, how can a language continue to be used effectively as a vehicle for expression and communication while it is in the middle of a change, or rather in the middle of a large number of changes? This puzzle is known as the Saussurean paradox, and it is not a trivial issue.
