Form and substance in glossematics

Abstract

As everybody knows, the distinction between form and substance is not Hjelmslev's invention. It has, with the more common terminology “form and matter”, “forma et materia”, been discussed for more than 2000 years, mainly among philosophers, but also with application to language. The late Danish linguist Paul Diderichsen had made extensive studies concerning the history of the term “form” in linguistics and prepared an article on this subject, but at his death it was not ready for publication. He shows how the distinction between form and matter has, in the course of time, been mixed up with what is now, in glossematic terminology, called expression and content, but in various, quite different, ways. From one point of view the sounds have been considered as the matter formed by thought, by ideas, from another point of view the structure of the logical proposition has been considered as form opposed to its content, the concepts, as matter. Later on, the term form has been used about flexion considered as forming the word-concepts, and finally, in the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th century form is often simply used to denote outer form (expression) as compared to content, (cp. the common dichotomy form-meaning).

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