"Cuando pensar era sentir: una mirada a la Gramática de Destutt de Tracy" ["When Thinking Was Feeling: A Look at Destutt de Tracy’s Grammaire"]

What is the purpose of writing a grammar in the sensualist tradition? For Condillac and Destutt de Tracy, their grammars were part of their reflections on a theory of ideas. Destutt de Tracy even creates a discipline which he calls idéologie (ideology). Unlike those grammars that understand language as a means to translate existing ideas, sensualism and idéologie consider the elements of language to be signs of ideas that originate in sensations, in what is caught from the outside world and transformed by the senses. This view involves new categorisations of the speech continuum and a different approach to signs, the necessary elements for ideas to be stored in memory and conveyed. Thus, signs make thought possible. Like sensualism, idéologie is genetic, as it does not stem from a reflection of ready-made thought to account for ideas and language but has its origin in the process whereby men, left to rely on their own faculties and driven by need, invented signs.