Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 – 1931)

The paper reminds some facts of the Ferdinand de Saussure‘s life, which could have influenced his posthumously published work Course in General Linguistics (1916). The attention is also paid to his other work Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (1879) which has played a role in the development of structural linguistics as well. The author shows that it is useful to go back (also critically) to all thoughts and premises of Ferdinand de Saussure even after 100 years. We still can, as it is also proved by F. Čermák, find there new stimuli and inspirations and, moreover, reveal a loopholes or unclear points that need another and more adequate interpretation