On the empirical level, the four constituent segments are still to be found, but the function they perform has been wholly inverted: replacing the analysis of the verb's privileged position, of its power to make discourse emerge from itself and become rooted in the being of representation, we find the analysis of an internal grammatical structure which is immanent in each language and constitutes it as an autonomous being, in other words upon itself; similarly, the analysis of the articulation common to words and things has been replaced by the theory of inﬂections and the attempt to establish laws of mutation proper to words alone; the theory of the radical has been substituted for the analysis of the representative root; finally, where before there was the search for the boundless continuity of derivation, the lateral kinship of languages has been revealed.