Linguistic system

The idea of language as a linguistic system appears in the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure, J.R. Firth, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Louis Hjelmslev, and Michael Halliday.

The paradigmatic principle - the idea that the process of using language involves choosing from a specifiable set of options - was established in semiotics by Saussure, whose concept of value (viz. “valeur”), and of signs as terms in a system, “showed up paradigmatic organization as the most abstract dimension of meaning”