The Scientific Nature of Linguistics and the Historical Role of Indo-European Linguistics : a Plea for Hard Times

The paper reflects critically on the development of structural linguistics, which moved from the model of Indo-European linguistics, with its historical-comparative perspective on real texts, to speculations about the "linguistic system" which often entail a serious loss of empiricism and a largely speculative constitution of its "objects". It aduces and analyzes a crucial text by Nietzsche about this subject.