Linguistics Quotes

• Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.

  Benjamin Lee Whorf

  Communication, Thinking, Shapes

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• Logic and mathematics are nothing but specialised linguistic structures.

  Jean Piaget

  Sensual, Logic, Mathematics

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• Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations.

  Edward Sapir

  Art, Work, Generations

  Edward Sapir (2014). “Language”, p.235, Cambridge University Press

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• It is only since linguistics has become more aware of its object of study, i.e. perceives the whole extent of it, that it is evident that this science can make a contribution to a range of studies that will be of interest to almost anyone.

  Ferdinand de Saussure

  Study, Range, Interest

  "Saussure's Third Course of Lectures on General Linghuistics (1910-1911)" by Ferdinand de Saussure, Pergamon Press, www.marxists.org. 1993.

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• It's as if we're higher apes who had a language faculty inserted.

  Noam Chomsky

  Apes, Language, Faculty

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• Every language is a world. Without translation, we would inhabit parishes bordering on silence.

  George Steiner

  Silence, Borders, World

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• The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Vocabulary, Important, Transition

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• It is one of the aims of linguistics to define itself, to recognise what belongs within its domain. In those cases where it relies upon psychology, it will do so indirectly, remaining independent.

  Ferdinand de Saussure

  Independent, Rely Upon, Psychology

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• The job of the linguist, like that of the biologist or the botanist, is not to tell us how nature should behave, or what its creations should look like, but to describe those creations in all their messy glory and try to figure out what they can teach us about life, the world, and, especially in the case of linguistics, the workings of the human mind.

  Arika Okrent

  Jobs, Mind, Trying

  Arika Okrent (2009). “In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language”, p.5, Spiegel & Grau

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• In general, the philological movement opened up countless sources relevant to linguistic issues, treating them in quite a different spirit from traditional grammar; for instance, the study of inscriptions and their language. But not yet in the spirit of linguistics.

  Ferdinand de Saussure

  Issues, Different, Movement

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• If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.

  Alfred Korzybski

  World, Maps, Links

  Alfred Korzybski (1958). “Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics”, p.61, Institute of GS

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• Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another.

  Ferdinand de Saussure

  Law, Branches, Language

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• The marvelous thing is that even in studying linguistics, we find that the universe as a whole is patterned, ordered, and to some degree intelligible to us.

  Kenneth Lee Pike

  Degrees, Study, Marvelous

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• The critical principle demanded an examination, for instance, of the contribution of different periods, thus to some extent embarking on historical linguistics.

  Ferdinand de Saussure

  Historical, Principles, Different

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• It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.

  Robert Morgan

  Philosophical, Language, Preoccupation

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• Logical positivists have never taken psychology into account in their epistemology, but they affirm that logical beings and mathematical beings are nothing but linguistic structures.

  Jean Piaget

  Taken, Psychology, Logical

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• As many languages you know, as many times you are a human being

  Tomas Garrigue Masaryk

  Tongue, Language, Politician

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• If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

  Noam Chomsky

  Inspirational, Relationship, Freedom

  Interview with John Pilger on BBC's "The Late Show", November 25, 1992.

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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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• Linguistics is very much a science. It's a human science, one of the human sciences. And it's one of the more interesting human sciences.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Interesting, Humans

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• In studying language we can discover many basic properties of this cognitive structure, its organization, and also the genetic predispositions that provide the foundation for its development. So in this respect, linguistics, first of all, tries to characterize a major feature of human cognitive organization. And second, I think it may provide a suggestive model for the study of other cognitive systems. And the collection of these systems is one aspect of human nature.

  Noam Chomsky

  Thinking, Organization, Trying

  Source: chomsky.info

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• The story of English spelling is the story of thousands of people - some well-known, most totally unknown - who left a permanent linguistic fingerprint on our orthography.

  David Crystal

  People, Stories, Well Known

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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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• The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Thinking, Facts, Ordinary

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• Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy profession, and a large number of its practitioners spend many nights drowning their sorrows in Ouisghian Zodahs.

  Douglas Adams

  Night, Numbers, Sorrow

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