“Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks they can talk about language.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Copy Share Image
“There's an accent shift, on average, every 25 miles in England” — Ben Crystal David Crystal Copy Share Image
According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary. — Roy Blount, Jr Copy Share Image
“The language looks rather different when you look at a lot of it at once.” — John Sinclair Copy Share Image
As many languages you know, as many times you are a human being — Tomas Garrigue Masaryk Copy Share Image
I have my own vocabulary. I love linguistics. That surprises people. — Matthew McConaughey Copy Share Image
I don't understand half of what you say and the other half doesn't make sense. — Rock Cowles Copy Share Image
Linguistic philosophers continue to argue that probably music is not a language, that is in the philosophical debate. Another point of view… — Robert Fripp Copy Share Image
The marvelous thing is that even in studying linguistics, we find that the universe as a whole is patterned, ordered, and to… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
A linguist deaf to the poetic functions of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistics are equally flagrant anachronisms. — Roman Jakobson Copy Share Image
In an instant he became aware that the tourist was about to try his own peculiar brand of linguistics, which meant that… — Terry Pratchett Copy Share Image
If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music… — A. R. Ammons Copy Share Image
“To discuss endlessly what silly people mean when they say silly things may be amusing but can hardly be important.” — Bertrand Russell Copy Share Image
We mathematicians are used to the fact that our subject is widely misunderstood, perhaps more than any other subject (except perhaps linguistics). — Keith Devlin Copy Share Image
If you focus on literature through only one small element of it, like the more scientific element of linguistics, then where is… — T.C. Boyle Copy Share Image
“Ho ho ho, tell me why you are not at home' is something Santa Claus could ask you if you stayed in… — Jakub Marian Copy Share Image
I joined a organisation called Wycliffe Bible Translators that had the objective of translating the Bible into all the languages of the… — Daniel Everett Copy Share Image
I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the… — Jeff Stilson Copy Share Image
There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed.… — Donald Davidson Copy Share Image
The job of the linguist, like that of the biologist or the botanist, is not to tell us how nature should behave,… — Arika Okrent Copy Share Image
Some have said that the thesis [of indeterminacy] is a consequence of my behaviorism. Some have said that it is a reductio… — Willard Van Orman Quine Copy Share Image
“...no theory of hermeneutic legitimation can be indeed legitimate if not by the process of hermeneutic reading… At the origin of the… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“As you are reading these words, you are taking part in one of the wonders of the natural world. For you and… — Steven Pinker Copy Share Image
“It may be worth while to illustrate this view of classification, by taking the case of languages. If we possessed a perfect… — Charles Darwin Copy Share Image
“... [In 'Pride and Prejudice'] Mr Collins's repulsiveness in his letter [about Lydia's elopement] does not exist only at the level of… — Andrew Elfenbein Copy Share Image
“If metaphors require an underlying cultural framework, then the heiroglyphhic language of the gods cannot be a merely primitive stage of human… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“Does it distress you, reader, how I remind you of their sexes in each sentence? ‘Hers’ and ‘his’? Does it make you… — Ada Palmer Copy Share Image
“No algorithm exists for the metaphor, nor can a metaphor be produced by means of a computer’s precise instructions, no matter what… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or… — Stephen Fry Copy Share Image
“Is it possible to make a sharp distinction between the content and the the form, between the personality of the Texas auctioneer… — Cleanth Brooks Copy Share Image
“The entire destiny of modern linguistics is in fact determined by Saussure's inaugural act through which he separates the ‘external’ elements of… — Pierre Bourdieu Copy Share Image
“As long as human beings speak different languages, the need for translation will continue.” — Nataly Kelly Copy Share Image
A new era in the physiological investigation of linguistic sounds was opened up by X-ray photography. — Roman Jakobson Copy Share Image
“Should data be treated as a language, as fundamental to our existence as our linguistic substrates?” — Roger Spitz Copy Share Image
“One small step towards a language is one giant leap towards inclusion.” — Abhijit Naskar Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
![“Some have said that the thesis [of indeterminacy] is a consequence of my behaviorism. Some have said that it is a reductio ad absurdum of my behaviorism. I disagree with this second point, but I agree with the first. I hold further that the behaviorism approach is mandatory. In psychology one may…” quote by Willard Van Orman Quine](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3e0/willard-van-orman-quine-10137_ads_some-have-said-that-the-thesis-of-indete_315688.jpg)
![“... [In 'Pride and Prejudice'] Mr Collins's repulsiveness in his letter [about Lydia's elopement] does not exist only at the level of the sentence: it permeates all aspects of his rhetoric. Austen's point is that the well-formed sentence belongs to a self-enclosed mind, incapable of sympathetic…” quote by Andrew Elfenbein](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/6cd/andrew-elfenbein-61722_closed-mind_in-pride-and-prejudice-mr-collins-s-repu_2489107.jpg)
