Interchangeability Linguistics Quotes

The most lasting thing from my linguistics education is SpecGram.. ~ Trey Jones

Bilingualism is for me the fundamental problem of linguistics. ~ Roman Jakobson

At the same time we overlap, because, I do linguistics, and Ben did a first degree in Linguistics at Lancaster University, so he knows some of my subject. ~ David Crystal

Linguistics becomes an ever eerier area, like I feel like I'm in Oz, Just trying to tell it like it was. ~ Ogden Nash

Dr. Karel Culik is an outstanding applied mathematician, a specialist in algebra, logic, computer sciences and mathematical linguistics. In 1965, he visited the linguistics research program at MIT, and we have worked together on several projects since. ~ Noam Chomsky

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

It is possible to be a great novelist - that is, to render a veracious account of your times - and a bad writer - that is, an incompetent practitioner of applied linguistics. ~ Angela Carter

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

Language corresponds only to itself. Intellectuals suffer from that. And once you begin to question language, you cannot stop at studying linguistics. Analytical philosophy becomes insufficient, artificial grammar becomes insufficient. ~ Martin Walser

In an instant he became aware that the tourist was about to try his own peculiar brand of linguistics, which meant that he would speak loudly and slowly in his own language. ~ Terry Pratchett

If you focus on literature through only one small element of it, like the more scientific element of linguistics, then where is the joy that brought us literature in the first place, which is to have a story? ~ T.C. Boyle

I joined a organisation called Wycliffe Bible Translators that had the objective of translating the Bible into all the languages of the world, and to do that you had to study linguistics, and so that was my initial exposure to linguistics. ~ Daniel Everett

The entire destiny of modern linguistics is in fact determined by Saussure's inaugural act through which he separates the 'external' elements of linguistics from the 'internal' elements, and, by reserving the title of linguistics for the latter, excludes from it all the investigations which establish a relationship between language and anthropology, the political history of those who speak it, or even the geography of the domain where it is spoken, because all of these things add nothing to a knowledge of language taken in itself. Given that it sprang from the autonomy attributed to language in relation to its social conditions of production, reproduction and use, structural linguistics could not become the dominant social science without exercising an ideological effect, by bestowing the appearance of scientificity on the naturalization of the products of history, that is, on symbolic objects. ~ Pierre Bourdieu

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

Money had no name, of course. And if it did have a name, it would no longer be money. What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability. ~ Haruki Murakami

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

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

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

Other approaches to studying language, and there are many, go by names like poetics, philology, and rhetoric, but as long as we have had the word in English, linguistics has been associated with the methods, goals, and results of science.1 When William Whewell (who is also responsible for the coinage, scientist) first proposed the term, it was in his History of the Inductive Sciences (1837.1:cxiv; he was borrowing it from the Germans, who, Teutonically
enough, later came to prefer Sprachwissenschaft). ~ Randy Allen Harris

essential differences between generative grammar and structural linguistics. ~ Noam Chomsky

The Difference Engine stands - for a replica works today, in the Science Museum in London - as a milestone of what could be achieved in precision engineering. In the composition of its alloys, the exactness of its dimensions, the interchangeability of its parts, nothing surpassed this segment of an unfinished machine. Still, it was a curio. And it was as far as Babbage could go. ~ James Gleick

There are ten parts of speech and they are all troublesome. ~ Mark Twain

There are only two things in the world: nothing and semantics. ~ Werner Erhard

The language looks rather different when you look at a lot of it at once. ~ John Sinclair

As long as human beings speak different languages, the need for translation will continue. ~ Nataly Kelly

It seemed to a number of philosophers of language, myself included, that we should attempt to achieve a unification of Chomsky's syntax, with the results of the researches that were going on in semantics and pragmatics. I believe that this effort has proven to be a failure. Though Chomsky did indeed revolutionize the subject of linguistics, it is not at all clear, at the end the century, what the solid results of this revolution are. As far as I can tell there is not a single rule of syntax that all, or even most, competent linguists are prepared to agree is a rule. ~ John Rogers Searle

My partner and I were going to renew our vowels, but the consonants revolted. ~ Stewart Lee Beck

To discuss endlessly what silly people mean when they say silly things may be amusing but can hardly be important. ~ Bertrand Russell

Early in "Postulates of Linguistics," Deleuze and Guattari claim that, "the elementary unit of language ... is the order-word," which "not to be believe but to be obeyed" (ATP, 76). Perhaps the starkest example is the judge's sentence that condemns a criminal to death (80-81; 94). But the French for order-word, mot d'ordre, also refers to the political slogan, which is substantiated by Deleuze and Guattari's reference to Lenin's pamphlet "On Slogans" (83). Both of these examples indicate how closely their linguistics aligns with the rhetorical theory of symbolic action. Rhetoric is excellent at studying those acts that cause incorporeal transformations, which as changes in a state of affairs that do not directly alter its materiality (80-88). ~ Anonymous

I would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective. ~ Mark Twain

Take what the British call the "greengrocer's apostrophe," named for aberrant signs advertising cauliflower's or carrot's in local fruit and vegetable shops. ~ Naomi S. Baron

One man's modus ponens is another man's reductio, as epistemologists are forever pointing out (In Critical Condition, p. 70) ~ Jerry A. Fodor

Remember that lettuce doesn't grow on a spruce; and it also doesn't rhyme with it. ~ Jakub Marian

To deny access to translation and interpreting services oppresses human rights and violates laws. ~ Nataly Kelly

We mathematicians are used to the fact that our subject is widely misunderstood, perhaps more than any other subject (except perhaps linguistics). ~ Keith Devlin

Irish and English are so widely separated in their mode of expression that nothing like a literal rendering from one language to the other is possible. ~ Robin Flower

forms of printing and recording. The study of language and communication by anthropologists developed out of the European tradition of linguistics, which usually is associated with disciplines ~ Michael Rynkiewich

Every page should explode, either because of its staggering absurdity, the enthusiasm of its principles, or its typography. ~ Tristan Tzara

The 'science' in 'science fiction' isn't just physics and engineering. It can also be linguistics, anthropology, and psychology. ~ Ann Leckie

The Devil fights from behind barricades of linguistic complexity, but the war of words will be won by those armed only with simplistic truths ~ Dean Cavanagh

Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other. ~ Ferdinand De Saussure

I should think a dead language would be rather boring, socially
speaking. ~ Sol Luckman

Sound is the hard currency; meaning is the network of cultural and formal conventions that turns it into a stick of gum at the
candy store. ~ Randy Allen Harris

I have my own vocabulary. I love linguistics. That surprises people. ~ Matthew McConaughey

Man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children, but no child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew, or write. ~ Charles Darwin

You cannot say something about something without revealing something about yourself. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

What the survival of threatened languages means, perhaps, is the endurance of dozens, hundreds, thousands of subtly different notions of truth. ~ Mark Abley

Polish has developed unimpeded; someone put their foot out and tripped English. The human grammar is a fecund weed, like grass. Languages like English, Persian, and Mandarin Chinese are mowed lawns, indicative of an interruption in natural proliferation. ~ John McWhorter

Of village: it is not called so because its inhabitants are of higher age on average; in fact, there is no connection between the words "village" and "age" whatsoever. ~ Jakub Marian

If there's any interaction between genes and languages, it is often languages that influence genes, since linguistic differences between populations lessen the chance of genetic exchange between them. ~ Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza

A theory of reality must not only explain reality, but also knowledge about that reality because knowing reality is part of reality. ~ Ashish Dalela

We live in an era of terrible preoccupation with presentation and interpretation, one in which relations between who someone is and what he believes and how he "expresses himself" have been thrown into big time flux. ~ David Foster Wallace

Linguistics is arguably the most hotly contested property in the academic realm. It is soaked with the blood of poets, theologians, philosophers, philologists, psychologists, biologists, and neurologists, along with whatever blood can be got out of grammarians ~ Russ Rymer

If the Mentalese story about the content of thought is true, then there couldn't be a private language argument. Good. That explains why there isn't one. (In Critical Condition, p. 68) ~ Jerry A. Fodor

Language, never forget, is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines. ~ Bill Bryson

Not everyone who knows how to write can be a writer. Not everyone who knows two languages can be a translator. ~ Nataly Kelly

The audible signals people can produce are not a series of crisp beeps like on a touch-tone phone. Speech is a river of breath, bent into hisses and hums by the soft flesh of the mouth and throat. ~ Steven Pinker

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

And another thing: because she and my father were very ideological people, always doing things from the body of principle and dogma of the Communist Party, there was a time when I thought that italic writing was Communist. It's not. ~ Michael Rosen

It may be a silly way, but if you remember that an owl looks like ʌ(OO)ʌ, it will perhaps help you remember that it is pronounced with something close to 'ʌoo'. ~ Jakub Marian

I formed several possible stories out of her speech, formed them at once, so it was less like I failed to understand than that I understood in chords, understood in a plurality of worlds. ~ Ben Lerner

A proof becomes a proof after the social act of accepting it as a proof. This is true of mathematics as it is of physics, linguistics, and biology. ~ Yuri Manin

If you're teaching, say, physics, there's no point in persuading a student that you're right. You want to encourage them to find out what the truth is, which is probably that you're wrong. ~ Noam Chomsky

Regional dialects have to become national tongues before they can attain lasting glory. As with America, as with Australia. Scottish is different because Scotland considers itself to be a nation. Its language deserves a chapter to itself. ~ Anthony Burgess

Despite its obscurity, probably no element on the periodic table has as colorful a history as antimony. Money, madness, poison, linguistics, charlatanism, sex - pretty much every theme that runs through the periodic table can be found in Element 51. ~ Sam Kean

But the thing about Literature is, well, basically it encapsulates all the disciplines - it's history, philosophy, politics, sexual politics, sociology, psychology, linguistics, science. Literature is mankind's organised response to the world around him, or her. ~ David Nicholls

meanwhile I was thinking that if half the cells in side of you are not you, doesn't that challenge the whole notion of me as a singular pronoun, let alone as the author of my fate? ~ John Green

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

I felt that blush in my chest as we talked stupid talk never quite revealing our queerness to each other but somehow wordlessly generating volumes of desire like some kind of sublanguage that makes you want to splash into it even with all its tensions. ~ David Wojnarowicz

By claiming that our words are too hard to understand, the media perpetuates the idea that WE are too hard to understand, and suggests that there's no point in trying. ~ C.N. Lester

Linguists are no different from any other people who spend more than nineteen hours a day pondering the complexities of grammar and its relationship to practically everything else in order to prove that language is so inordinately complicated that it is impossible in principle for people to talk. ~ Ronald W. Langacker

Das mine!' protested Ava, Bennie's daughter, affirming Alex's recent theory that language acquisition involved a phase of speaking German. She snatched a plastic skillet away from his own daughter, Cara-Ann, who lurched after it, roaring, 'Mine pot! Mine pot! ~ Jennifer Egan

No satisfactory historical linguistic study was carried out before the beginning of the nineteenth century, and accordingly linguists had to develop appropriate methods for the new field. Like other new sciences, historical linguistics then looked to those that had developed useful methods. The greatest help came from comparative anatomy. ~ Winfred P. Lehmann

[Philosophers] have come to envy the philologist and the mathematician, and they have taken over all the inessential elements in those studies - with the result that they know more about devoting care and attention to their speech than about devoting such attention to their lives. ~ Seneca.

The pleasure of the sentence is to a high degree cultural. The artifact created by rhetors, grammarians, linguists, teachers, writers, parents
this artifact is mimicked in a more or less ludic manner; we are playing with an exceptional object, whose paradox has been articulated by linguistics: immutably structured and yet infinitely renewable: something like chess. ~ Roland Barthes

I think that this vein is close to being mined out already, but I'll say that my knowledge of and talent for linguistics are quite limited and I'm not aware of being a hell of a lot more interested in that topic than I am in others. ~ Neal Stephenson

Linguistics is our best tool for bringing about social change and SF is our best tool for testing such changes before they are implemented in the real world, therefore the conjunction of the two is desirable and should be useful. ~ Suzette Haden Elgin

A word is an arbitrary label - that's the foundation of linguistics. But many people think otherwise. They believe in word magic: that uttering a spell, incantation, curse, or prayer can change the world. Don't snicker: Would you ever say, 'Nothing has gone wrong yet' without looking for wood to knock? ~ Steven Pinker

The careful scholarship of the dedicated amateur mycophile R. Gordon Wasson reads like an exciting scientific detective story. Moreover, his willingness to pursue the quest through the wide range of linguistics, archeology, folklore, philology, ethnobotany, plant ecology, human physiology, and prehistory constitutes an object lesson to all holistic professional students of man. ~ Weston La Barre

The [mental] organization of grammar [is] a case where complexity in the mind is not caused by learning; learning is caused by complexity in the mind. ~ Steven Pinker

In this sort of predicament, always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word ("good", for instance)? From what sort of examples? In what language-games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

It seems that in almost all societies, the attitudes that people have to language change is basically the same. People everywhere tend to say that the older form of a language is in some sense 'better' than the form that is being used today. ~ Terry Crowley

Strunk was born in 1869, and today's writers cannot base their craft exclusively on the advice of a man who developed his sense of style before the invention of the telephone (let alone the Internet), before the advent of modern linguistics and cognitive science, before the wave of informalization that swept the world in the second half of the twentieth century. ~ Steven Pinker

The rules of syntax and intonation and words matured over time into the system we have today because they were progressively refined by use and the forge of survival and reproduction - not because the brain got big and complicated for some other reason, and all of a sudden we discovered we could now manipulate symbols as well. ~ Christine Kenneally

Definitions, contrary to popular opinion, tell us nothing about things. They only describe people's linguistic habits; that is, they tell us what noises people make under what conditions. ~ S.I. Hayakawa

Sending someone all of the possible birthday party emoji is extra festive: great! But sending someone all of the possible phallic emoji (say, the eggplant and the cucumber and the corncob and the banana) is NOT extra sexxaayy: that's a weird salad. ~ Gretchen McCulloch

Linguistics is a good way of defining the culture of a brand. The vocabulary used by sports and lifestyle brands - running, fitness, training, motorsports - is all about functionality, whereas the vocabulary of the luxury business - handbags, ready-to-wear - is all about the product. ~ Francois-Henri Pinault

In the world "out there," there are no verbs, no speech events, and no adjacency pairs. There are particles of matter moving around in certain recurrent and yet not fully predictable patterns. We interpret such experiences as and through symbolic means, including linguistic expressions. That's what it means to be human. ~ Duranti A Alessandro

When a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world. ~ George Steiner

The current President's verbal abuse of language itself - with his slurred, sloshing semi-coherent word salad and his insistence that truth and fact are whatever he wants them to be, even if he wants them to be different from what they were yesterday, no matter what else he's serving, he's always serving meaninglessness. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. ~ Donna J. Haraway

Noam Chomsky, in particular, says flatly and often that he has very little concern for language in and of itself; never has, never will. His driving concern is with mental structure, and language is the most revealing tool he has for getting at the mind. Most linguists these days follow Chomsky's lead here. ~ Randy Allen Harris

The sage does not become trapped in semantics, does not mistake map for territory, but rather "opens things up to the light of Heaven" by flowing with the words, by playing with the words. Once attuned to this flow, the sage need make no special effort to "illumine," for language does it by itself, spontaneously. Language spills over. ~ Hakim Bey

They arose in my mind as 'given' things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour (especially, even apart from the necessities of life, since the mind would wing to the other pole and spread itself on the linguistics): yet always I had the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of 'inventing'. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The power of impulses which haunt our phantasies, of imaginary modes of being which ignite the poetic word, and of the all-embracing, that most powerful something which menaces us so long as we feel unloved, in all these registers and perhaps in others as well, the dialectic of power and form takes place, which insures that language only captures the foam on the surface of life. ~ Paul Ricoeur

Most of my formal choices are a combination of everything I learned about form - semiotics, linguistics, and the history of style experimentations tethered to literary movements (formalism, deconstruction, modernism, and postmodernism), and the basic principal of breaking every rule I ever learned from a patriarchal writing tradition that never included my body or experience, and thus has nothing to offer me in terms of representation. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Moving in the conventional direction, phonetics concerns the acoustic dimensions of linguistic sound. Phonology studies the clustering of those acoustic properties into significant cues. Morphology studies the clustering of those cues into meaningful units. Syntax studies the arrangement of those meaningful units into expressive sequences. Semantics studies the composite meaning of those sequences. ~ Randy Allen Harris

I tell ya, if I hadn't chosen the career of being a performer, I think linguistics would have been a natural area that I'd have loved - to teach it, probably, Language has always fascinated me. There's a genetic inheritance there a good language gene, which I inherited [from my mother and grandfather] and she fostered that in me as he fostered that in her. ~ George Carlin

Literature that keeps employing new linguistic and formal modes of expression to draft a panorama of society as a whole while at the same time exposing it, tearing the masks from its face - for me that would be deserving of an award. ~ Elfriede Jelinek