Roman Jakobson Quotes

• Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.

  Roman Jakobson

  May, Language

  Roman Jakobson, Krystyna Pomorska, Stephen Rudy (1987). “Language in Literature”, p.410, Harvard University Press

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• The function of poetry is to point out that the sign is not identical to the referent.

  Roman Jakobson

  Art, Poetry, Function

  Roman Jakobson (1967). “To honor Roman Jakobson: Essays on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, 11 October 1966”

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• When I speak it is in order to be heard.

  Roman Jakobson

  Order, Speak, Heard

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• Speech sounds cannot be understood, delimited, classified and explained except in the light of the tasks which they perform in language.

  Roman Jakobson

  Light, Sound, Tasks

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• What's next? Shall we appoint elephants to teach zoology?

  Roman Jakobson

  Teaching, Elephants, Next

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• Bilingualism is for me the fundamental problem of linguistics.

  Roman Jakobson

  Fundamentals, Bilingualism, Language

  Roman Jakobson (1971). “Selected Writings: Word and Language”, p.561, Walter de Gruyter

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• A linguist deaf to the poetic functions of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistics are equally flagrant anachronisms.

  Roman Jakobson

  Language, Poetic, Deaf

  Roman Jakobson, Krystyna Pomorska, Stephen Rudy (1987). “Language in Literature”, p.94, Harvard University Press

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• Every linguistic sign is located on two axes: the axis of simultaneity and that of succession.

  Roman Jakobson

  Axes, Two, Succession

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• In poetic language, in which the sign as such takes on an autonomous value, this sound symbolism becomes an actual factor and creates a sort of accompaniment to the signified.

  Roman Jakobson

  Symbolism, Sound, Language

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• The poetic function is the set towards the message itself, focus on the message for its own sake which by promoting the palpability of signs, deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects.

  Roman Jakobson

  Art, Poetry, Focus

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• Linguistic sounds, considered as external, physical phenomena have two aspects, the motor and the acoustic.

  Roman Jakobson

  Two, Sound, Acoustics

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• A new era in the physiological investigation of linguistic sounds was opened up by X-ray photography.

  Roman Jakobson

  Photography, Eras, Rays

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• Remember that the pharynx is at a crossroads from which leads off, at the top, the passage to the mouth cavity and the passage to the nasal cavity, and below, the passage to the larynx.

  Roman Jakobson

  Mouths, Remember, Crossroads

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• It is once again the vexing problem of identity within variety; without a solution to this disturbing problem there can be no system, no classification.

  Roman Jakobson

  Identity, Problem, Classification

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• Acoustic phonetics, which is developing and increasing in richness very rapidly, already enables us to solve many of the mysteries of sound, mysteries which motor phonetics could not even begin to solve.

  Roman Jakobson

  Sound, Acoustics, Mystery

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• The search for the symbolic value of phonemes, each taken as a whole, runs the risk of giving rise to ambiguous and trivial interpretations because phonemes are complex entities, bundles of different distinctive features.

  Roman Jakobson

  Running, Taken, Giving

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• Now the identification of individual sounds by phonetic observation is an artificial way of proceeding.

  Roman Jakobson

  Sound, Way, Individual

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• Semantics, or the study of meaning, remained undeveloped, while phonetics made rapid progress and even came to occupy the central place in the scientific study of language.

  Roman Jakobson

  Progress, Study, Language

  95 Copy quote

• At first acoustics attributed to the different sounds only a limited number of characteristic features.

  Roman Jakobson

  Numbers, Sound, Different

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