【正确答案】Modern linguistics began from the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who is often described as the "father of modern linguistics" and "a master of a discipline which he made modern". And Saussure's collected notes were put together by his students to produce the great work, Course in General Linguistics, in 1916. It marked the beginning of lnodern linguistics.
Saussure believed that language is a system of signs. This sign is the union of a form and an idea, which Saussure called signifier and signified.
Saussure exerted two kinds of influence on modern linguistics. First, he provided a general orientation, a sense of the task of linguistics which had seldom been questioned. Second, he influenced modern linguistics in the specific concepts. Many of the developments of modern linguistics can be described as his concepts, i.e. his idea of the arbitrary nature of the sign, laugue VS. parole, synchrony VS. diachrony, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations, etc. Saussure's fundamental perception is of revolutionary significance, and it is he that pushed linguistics into a brand new stage and all linguistics in the twentieth century are Saussurean linguistics.

【答案解析】[解析] 本题考食Saussure对现代语言学的贡献。