Ferdinand de Saussure
E172769
Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose foundational work in structural linguistics profoundly shaped 20th-century humanities and social sciences.
All labels observed (4)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Ferdinand de Saussure canonical | 36 |
| de Saussure | 2 |
| Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure | 1 |
| Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T1515163 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Ferdinand de Saussure Context triple: [Claude Lévi-Strauss, influencedBy, Ferdinand de Saussure]
-
A.
Roman Jakobson
Roman Jakobson was a pioneering Russian-American linguist and literary theorist whose work in structuralism and phonology profoundly shaped modern linguistics and semiotics.
-
B.
Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir was a pioneering American anthropologist-linguist whose work on language, culture, and cognition helped lay the foundations of modern linguistics and linguistic anthropology.
-
C.
Benjamin Lee Whorf
Benjamin Lee Whorf was an American linguist best known for the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, which proposes that the structure of a language influences its speakers’ cognition and worldview.
-
D.
C. K. Ogden
C. K. Ogden was a British linguist, philosopher, and writer best known for his work on the theory of language, including the development of Basic English and influential studies in semantics.
-
E.
Morris Swadesh
Morris Swadesh was an American linguist best known for pioneering lexicostatistics and glottochronology, methods for studying language classification and historical relationships through core vocabulary comparison.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Ferdinand de Saussure Target entity description: Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose foundational work in structural linguistics profoundly shaped 20th-century humanities and social sciences.
-
A.
Roman Jakobson
Roman Jakobson was a pioneering Russian-American linguist and literary theorist whose work in structuralism and phonology profoundly shaped modern linguistics and semiotics.
-
B.
Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir was a pioneering American anthropologist-linguist whose work on language, culture, and cognition helped lay the foundations of modern linguistics and linguistic anthropology.
-
C.
Benjamin Lee Whorf
Benjamin Lee Whorf was an American linguist best known for the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, which proposes that the structure of a language influences its speakers’ cognition and worldview.
-
D.
C. K. Ogden
C. K. Ogden was a British linguist, philosopher, and writer best known for his work on the theory of language, including the development of Basic English and influential studies in semantics.
-
E.
Morris Swadesh
Morris Swadesh was an American linguist best known for pioneering lexicostatistics and glottochronology, methods for studying language classification and historical relationships through core vocabulary comparison.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (49)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
academic
ⓘ
human ⓘ linguist ⓘ structuralist linguist ⓘ |
| countryOfCitizenship | Switzerland ⓘ |
| dateOfBirth | 1857-11-26 ⓘ |
| dateOfDeath | 1913-02-22 ⓘ |
| educatedAt |
University of Berlin
ⓘ
linked to:
Humboldt University of Berlin
University of Geneva ⓘ University of Leipzig ⓘ |
| employer | University of Geneva ⓘ |
| familyName |
de Saussure
ⓘ
linked to:
Ferdinand de Saussure
|
| fieldOfWork |
Indo-European studies
ⓘ
historical linguistics ⓘ linguistics ⓘ phonology ⓘ semiotics ⓘ |
| fullName | Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure ⓘ |
| givenName | Ferdinand ⓘ |
| hasAcademicDiscipline | semiology ⓘ |
| influenced |
Claude Lévi-Strauss
ⓘ
Jacques Derrida ⓘ Louis Hjelmslev ⓘ Roland Barthes ⓘ Roman Jakobson ⓘ structuralism in the humanities ⓘ |
| knownFor |
Cours de linguistique générale
ⓘ
linked to:
Course in General Linguistics
concepts of signifier and signified ⓘ distinction between langue and parole ⓘ distinction between synchronic and diachronic linguistics ⓘ founding structural linguistics ⓘ theory of the linguistic sign ⓘ |
| languageOfWorkOrName | French ⓘ |
| movement | structuralism ⓘ |
| nativeLanguage | French ⓘ |
| notableIdea |
arbitrariness of the sign
ⓘ
language as a system of differences without positive terms ⓘ relational nature of linguistic value ⓘ |
| notableWork |
Cours de linguistique générale
ⓘ
linked to:
Course in General Linguistics
|
| placeOfBirth |
Geneva
ⓘ
Switzerland ⓘ |
| placeOfDeath |
Switzerland
ⓘ
Vaud ⓘ Vufflens-le-Château ⓘ |
| positionHeld | professor of linguistics ⓘ |
| proposedTerm | semiology ⓘ |
| sexOrGender | male ⓘ |
| theory |
general linguistics
ⓘ
structural linguistics ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Ferdinand de Saussure Description of subject: Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose foundational work in structural linguistics profoundly shaped 20th-century humanities and social sciences.
Referenced by (40)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
linked to: Ferdinand de Saussure
linked to: Ferdinand de Saussure
linked to: Ferdinand de Saussure
subject linked to:
Jakobson
subject linked to:
Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure
linked to: Ferdinand de Saussure