LANGUAGE LEVELS: EUGENIO COSERIU’S LINGUISTIC THEORY

ABSTRACT From his very early writings on general linguistics onwards, the Romanian linguist Eugenio Coseriu, like his own contemporary Noam Chomsky and Ferdinand de Saussure before them, delineated the concept of linguistic knowledge . His pursuit of this concept led him to elaborate his famous distinctions of the levels of language , which came to be one of his most important contributions to linguistic theory. In addition to detailing such distinctions, this article discusses the author’s view of the nature, content and structure of linguistic knowledge. It also presents some external and internal circumstances to his theory that could explain the widespread ignorance of Coseriu’s ideas in the realm of contemporary general linguistics, especially in the English-speaking world, before recent claims that Coseriu’s original contributions could have given linguistics a different direction if half a century ago his work had received proper attention. Finally, this paper addresses the question whether Coseriu is a neglected genius of twentieth century linguistics as it is frequently argued by his former students and devotees.

摘要：罗马尼亚语言学家欧金尼奥·科塞里乌（Eugenio Coseriu）自早年涉足普通语言学的著述以来，与其同时代的诺姆·乔姆斯基（Noam Chomsky）以及先于二人的费尔迪南·德·索绪尔（Ferdinand de Saussure）一样，均对语言知识（linguistic knowledge）这一核心概念进行了阐释与界定。他对该概念的探索促使其系统阐发了著名的语言层级划分理论，该理论也成为其对语言学理论最重要的贡献之一。除详述此类层级划分外，本文还探讨了科塞里乌关于语言知识的本质、内涵与结构的学术观点。此外，本文梳理了影响其理论发展的内外部语境，借此解释了为何在当代普通语言学领域，尤其是英语世界，科塞里乌的学术思想长期被广泛忽视——直至近年才有观点提出：若半个世纪前其研究能得到应有的重视，科塞里乌的原创性贡献本可为语言学发展开辟另一路径。最后，本文就其门生与追随者时常主张的“科塞里乌是否为二十世纪语言学界被忽视的天才”这一议题展开了探讨。