Ferdinand de Saussure Quotes

Grammar is the analysis of language.

I know what the structure of the language is.

As Bromberger observed, rules are understood to be elements of the computational systems that determine the sound and meaning of the infinite array of expressions of a language; the information so derived is accessed by other systems in language use.

I'm left-brained, so I'm all about a mathematical approach to language. I've always been interested in that.

Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis.

For me, language is something that I've always loved. When I read, that's what I look for. When I write, that's what I strive for.

There are very deep and restrictive principles that determine the nature of human language and are rooted in the specific character of the human mind

When a scientist considers all high-tech mental machinery needed to arrange words into ordinary sentences, prescriptive rules are, at best, inconsequential little decorations. The very fact that they have to be drilled shows that they are alien to the natural workings of the language system. One can choose to obsess over prescriptive rules, but they have no more to do with language than the criteria for judging cats at a cat show have to do with mammalian biology.

Speech sounds can be analyzed into fundamental units called phonemes; these move around like protozoa in a drop of water, and, like protozoa, join together and split up.

Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.

We must plow through the whole of language.

Grammar is the grave of letters.

For one thing, studying language is by itself a part of a study of human intelligence that is, perhaps, the central aspect of human nature. And second, I think, it is a good model for studying other human properties, which ought to be studied by psychologists in the same way.

My linguistics is pretty theoretical.

...language is not the frosting, it's the cake.

Logic is to grammar what the sense of words is to their sound.

For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules-- it hasn't been taught to us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus preceding to exact rules.

Language. I loved it. And for a long time I would think of myself, of my whole body, as an ear.

A sentence has meaning in the sense that a train has a track, not that a train has a passenger.

Grammar is what gives sense to language .... sentences make words yield up their meaning. Sentences actively create sense in language. And the business of the study of sentences is grammar.

There is a satisfactory boniness about grammar which the flesh of sheer vocabulary requires before it can become a vertebrate and walk the earth.

The question of "unreality"is a very important one. Misled by grammar, the great majority of those logicians who have dealt with this question have dealt with it on mistaken lines. They have regarded grammatical form as a surer guide in analysis than, in fact, it is. And they have not known what differences in grammatical form are important.

A sentence is made up of words, a statement is made in words.... Statements are made, words or sentences are used.

Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand.

No matter what any of the grammar teachers say, punctuation is an arbitrary matter. It should be used to make sentences clear.