glossematics (Glossematik)
Louis *Hjelmslev's name for his theory of language. Like Ferdinand de *Saussure, one of his key inspirations, Hjelmslev took the position that language is arbitrary in relation to the real world, which is to say there is nothing about a tree, for example, that necessitates it being called a tree, a fact that is amply proven by the great variety of different words different languages use for ostensibly the same object. By the same token, not all languages name things in the same way—his two demonstrations of this have become quite famous: the first compares Welsh and English words for colours, showing that the Welsh word ‘glas’ covers a spectrum of colours that in English would be shared between green, blue, and gray; the second compares Danish, German, and French words for trees individually and collectively and again shows that there is a disparity in the way they name the world. His conclusion, which has much in common with Saussure, was that words are ... ...
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