L. Sprague de Camp Quotes

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

Within speech, words are subject to a kind of relation that is independent of the first and based on their linkage: these are syntagmatic relations, of which I have spoken.

A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.

From a strictly articulatory point of view there is no succession of sounds.

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.

I'm very concerned with questions of language. This is what I think of when I think of myself as a writer: I'm someone who writes sentences and paragraphs. I think of the sentence - not only what it shares but, in a sense, what it looks like. I like to match words not only in a way that convey a meaning, possibly an indirect meaning, but even at times words that have a kind of visual correspondence.

Grammar is the analysis of language.

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.

We must plow through the whole of language.

Grammar is the grave of letters.

My linguistics is pretty theoretical.

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

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

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

Who climbs the grammar-tree, distinctly knows Where noun, and verb, and participle grows.

A period may be defined as a portion of speech that has in itself a beginning and an end, being at the same time not too big to be taken in at a glance

I am still studying verbs and the mystery of how they connect nouns. I am more suspicious of adjectives than at any other time in all my born days.

Learning is the dictionary, but sense the grammar of science.

Time is a topological manifold. It is a surface. Events flow across it like water over land and like water flowing over land, when the land is flat, the water becomes reflective and moves slowly. When the landscape becomes disrupted, the water moves faster and chaotic attractors appear and new kinds of activity emerge and out of that new activity, there comes the new states that define the future.

Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

I do not pretend that language is science. It isan instrument for the attainment of science.

If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.

J, n. A consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel . . . from a Latin verb, "jacere", "to throw," because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape.

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not.