The paper briefly discusses the problems and methods of language historiography thematizing Saussure’s distinction between matière and objet. A number of representative nexuses are also commented on: the history of the phoneme, the supposed birth of scientific linguistics, the question of precursors, the relation between structuralism and phenomenology, the relation between language theories and research practices.
Keywords: Historiographical models, History of linguistics, History of the "phoneme", Objet and matière, Phenomenology and structuralism; Precursors.