Kenneth L. Pike Quotes

Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.

Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.

I'm a linguist. I study how people talk to each other and how the ways we talk affect our relationships.

Words," he said, "is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life.

Whatever one wishes to say, there is one noun only by which to express it, one verb only to give it life, one adjective only which will describe it. One must search until one has discovered them, this noun, this verb, this adjective, and never rest content with approximations, never resort to trickery, however happy, or to vulgarism, in order to dodge the difficulty.

The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.

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

I'm very interested in language because it reflects our obsessions and ways of conceptualising the world.

Semantics, or the study of meaning, remained undeveloped, while phonetics made rapid progress and even came to occupy the central place in the scientific study of language.

The words of the world want to make sentences.

I mean, language fascinates me anyway, and different words have different energies and you can change the whole drive of a sentence.

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

The text is a limited field of possible constructions.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

There are about 30 words around you all the time, like 'thread' or 'exit.'

If I remember correctly, a writer is someone who wants to convey information. Language or writing is a code.

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.

A philosopher once said, 'Half of good philosophy is good grammar.'

Words are things, but things which mean. We cannot do away with meaning without doing away with signs, that is, with language itself. Moreover, we would have to do away with the universe. All the things man touches are impregnated with meaning.

Words are all we have.

The way that words fit together is always interesting to me. I love words.

Our world isn't made of earth, air and water or even molecules and atoms; our world is made of language.

No matter where we live, we have to use words. Once you've been looking into words, their stories, it's easy to fall in love with them.

Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.

I think structure is so deep in us. We put it in stories we tell our friends or in emails we write. We want it. It's how we create meaning.