ABSTRACT
Saussure’s diagnosis of the reasons for the failure of Comparative Philology is blunt and uncompromising. The comparative method itself was vitiated from the very beginning by not taking history into account. According to the Cours de linguistique générale:
The first mistake made by the comparative philologists was one which contains the seeds of all their other mistakes. Their investigations, which were in any case limited to the Indo-European languages, show a failure to inquire into the significance of the linguistic comparisons they established and the connexions they discovered. Comparative grammar was exclusively comparative, instead of being historical. Comparison is no doubt essential for all historical reconstruction. But in itself comparison does not warrant drawing conclusions.
