“The great crisis” in the history of linguistics and how it was overcome

The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century were a period of serious crisis in the history of linguistics. Some linguists were not content with the positivist paradigm related to the comparative-historical linguistics. There were diff erent opinions on how to overcome this situation, but at that time, the paradigm proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure won out. The reasons for that are considered in the article.