Ferdinand de Saussure

Jonathan Culler重新梳理了《普通语言学教程》的线索，是《教程》极好的辅助读本。

If a piece is lost from a chess set we can replace it with any other sort of object and will not be confused: there is no physical properties necessary to be a king，etc. Hence we shall understand Saussure's paradoxical claim that in the system of a language there are only differences, with no positive terms.