When Ferdinand de Saussure, the eminent linguist, died in 1913, no publications had resulted from his teachings in general linguistics. After his death, however, several of his disciples published his university lectures from notes taken down by students in class and from Saussure’s personal notes. Today, half-acentury later, the full implications of Saussure’s teachings have still to be elaborated. For a long time, American scholars seemed particularly reluctant to turn to the Cours; reviews or critiques were few and far between. In the words of Einar Haugen: “Rarely does one see a reference in American writings on linguistic theory to the works of de Saussure, Trubetzkoy, or other European writers, although they were the thinkers who gave us the instruments with which we work. I yield to no one in my admiration for Bloomfield and Sapir; but I regard it as a kind of provincialism to suppose that all sound linguistics began with them.” This state of affairs changed rather quickly with the 1959 English translation of the Cours after which the work enjoyed rather unprecedented success. To give only one instance, Noam Chomsky, who had made no important references to Saussure before 1959, referred to him frequently after that date.