CHRONOGENESIS AND THE VERB

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Chronogenesis and the Verb

Now, since praxeogeny refers to the linguistic practice in actual space and time, it subsumes a certain 'operative time' which supports the use of language in context. The operative time is, in its turn, part of the cosmic time, the bearer of all existence. The relationship between the various limes the cosmic, the glossogenic, the praxeogenic and the operative can be represented as: COSMIC TIME
GLOSSOGENIC TIME

The whole of the linguistics proposed by Gustave Guillaume depends crucially on the consideration of language as a phenomenon occuring in time. In the words of R. Valin, 'time ts remarkably the principal parameter of his analysis, making Guillaumian structuralism quite different from the others'.1 What is presented in the 'le?ons' of this astute and highly idiosyncratic theoretician, is not a single notion of time, but a plurality of times. In Guillaume's words, "language is a phenomenon, not only in relation to historical time, but also in relation to each of its instants, the summation of which constitutes the historical time".2 However, not just language, but history itself is viewed as phenomenological. Thus, he makes a primary distinction between cosmic time ('the bearer of all events'), glossogenic time and praxeogenic time. While 'glossogenic time' corresponds to the'continuous collective activity within which a language is constructed, the praxeogenic time is constitutive of the momentary and individual activity of using the product of, and contributing to glossogeny. Any language at any given historical time is the integration of the praxeogenic, semiological, and grammatical systems into a glossogenic system. However, within glossogeny, there is a teleology as per which the praxeogenic variations occur in order to make up for the deficit of language in relation to human thought. (Guillaume explains the development of the article in French by such a manner of psychomechanism.)

PRAXEOGENIC TIME -

PRAXEOGENIC TIMEGLOSSOLOGTC TIME

GLOSSOGENIC TIME

COSMIC TIME

As indicated in the diagram, the operative time has two further aspects: the discursive time which is the bearer of the construction of units of more or less complexity, of which the discourse or the sentence is constituted; and, the glossologic time involving the execution of the virtual systematic operations by which a language encloses within it the patterns of its system. While the discursive time is 'perceptible', and even divisible thanks to the actual linguistic occurrences within it, the glossologic time is 'mainly unconscious, appears as if reduced to the dimensions of an instant', and it is here that the psycho-mechanism of the historical language development is to be observed. What Guillaume is trying to demonstrate by means of his