Top 100 Quotes About Linguistics
#1. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy profession, and a large number of its practitioners spend many nights drowning their sorrows in Ouisghian Zodahs.
Douglas Adams
#2. I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet.That may be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't afraid of vaccuum cleaners.
Jeff Stilson
#3. 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
#4. When I was a college student and I got interested in linguistics the concern among students was, this is a lot of fun, but after we have done a structural analysis of every language in the world what's left? It was assumed there were basically no puzzles.
Noam Chomsky
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. essential differences between generative grammar and structural linguistics.
Noam Chomsky
#9. Linguine linguistics that left my verbal essence saucy,
Send a message, leave you sleepin' next to headless horsey.
Action Bronson
#10. 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
#11. He immersed himself in anthropology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, accumulating hundreds of credit hours without collecting a degree. He saw no reason to. The pursuit of knowledge, he maintained, was a worthy objective in its own right and needed no external validation.
Jon Krakauer
#12. Pharoahe Monch is like an eloquent linguistics professor moonlighting as a rhyme serial killer terrorist, challenging the listeners' I.Q. while daring him or her to keep up.
Kool Moe Dee
#13. The methodologies of examining hip hop are borrowed from sociology, politics, religion, economics, urban studies, journalism, communications theory, American studies, transatlantic studies, black studies, history, musicology, comparative literature, English, linguistics, and other disciplines.
Michael Eric Dyson
#14. A linguist deaf to the poetic functions of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistics are equally flagrant anachronisms.
Roman Jakobson
#15. The 'science' in 'science fiction' isn't just physics and engineering. It can also be linguistics, anthropology, and psychology.
Ann Leckie
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. Bilingualism is for me the fundamental problem of linguistics.
Roman Jakobson
#20. 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
#22. 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
#23. What's "right" in language comprehension: ERPs reveal right hemisphere language capabilities" published in Language and Linguistics Compass (2008; Volume 2, pages 1-17).
Anonymous
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. Daniel Dennett is our best current philosopher. He is the next Bertrand Russell. Unlike traditional philosophers, Dan is a student of neuroscience, linguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, and psychology. He's redefining and reforming the role of the philosopher.
Marvin Minsky
#27. The marvelous thing is that even in studying linguistics, we find that the universe as a whole is patterned, ordered, and to some degree intelligible to us.
Kenneth L. Pike
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. The most lasting thing from my linguistics education is SpecGram..
Trey Jones
#33. 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
#34. Linguistics becomes an ever eerier area, like I feel like I'm in Oz, Just trying to tell it like it was.
Ogden Nash
#35. We mathematicians are used to the fact that our subject is widely misunderstood, perhaps more than any other subject (except perhaps linguistics).
Keith Devlin
#36. I went to Briar Cliff College initially, and then I transferred to Georgetown University, because I was a Russian major, and I was one of two girls accepted that year. This was September 1969 - well, that would have been 1970 - into the School Of Languages And Linguistics in Georgetown.
P. J. Soles
#37. 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
#38. In school, I studied psychology, linguistics, neuroscience. I understand that there is a real lack of respect for the brain.
Aloe Blacc
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.
Roy Blount Jr.
#42. 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
#43. It is one of the aims of linguistics to define itself, to recognise what belongs within its domain. In those cases where it relies upon psychology, it will do so indirectly, remaining independent.
Ferdinand De Saussure
#44. Psychology, the talking cure, linguistics, and semantics - they're all like dogs poking around and sniffing their own vomit. There might be some gems in there, you never know. For certain you will at the very least know what you had for lunch. And you can ascertain what not to eat again.
David Byrne
#45. To deny access to translation and interpreting services oppresses human rights and violates laws.
Nataly Kelly
#46. Welsh mutates initial consonants. Actually all languages do, but most of them take centuries, while Welsh does it while your mouth is still open.
Jo Walton
#47. Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other.
Ferdinand De Saussure
#48. Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings ... but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.
Robert A. Heinlein
#49. Don't you find it odd that two of the foremost symptoms of insanity are the hearing voices and talking to oneself? Is it any wonder that language is an area of such interest in psychology?
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)
Mort W. Lumsden
#51. Translation software is not making translators obsolete. Has medical diagnostic software made doctors obsolete?
Nataly Kelly
#52. The words we choose can build communities, reunite loved ones, and inspire others. They can be a catalyst for change. However, our words also have the power to destroy and divide: they can start a war, reduce a lifelong relationship to a collection of memories, or end a life.
Simon S. Tam
#53. 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
#54. Devising a vocabulary for gardening is like devising a vocabulary for sex. There are the correct Latin names, but most people invent euphemisms. Those who refer to plants by Latin name are considered more expert, if a little pedantic.
Diane Ackerman
#55. Language was just that thing that happened when you opened your mouth at the table, squeezed a few noises out of your vocal chords, and induced Socrates thereby to pass the salt.
Randy Allen Harris
#56. Words are catch-basins of experience, fingerprints and footprints of the past that the literary detective may scrutinize in order to sleuth out the history of human consciousness.
Philip Zaleski
#58. How many Lojbanists does it take to change a broken
light-bulb?" goes the old Lojban joke. "Two: one to decide
what to change it into and one to decide what kind of bulb
emits broken light.
Arika Okrent
#59. 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
#60. The only languages which do not change are dead ones.
David Crystal
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. A theory of reality must not only explain reality, but also knowledge about that reality because knowing reality is part of reality.
Ashish Dalela
#64. Every page should explode, either because of its staggering absurdity, the enthusiasm of its principles, or its typography.
Tristan Tzara
#65. Remember that lettuce doesn't grow on a spruce; and it also doesn't rhyme with it.
Jakub Marian
#66. 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
#67. The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon.
Michael Crichton
#68. Ho ho ho, tell me why you are not at home' is something Santa Claus could ask you if you stayed in a hotel over Christmas. It is most certainly not the reason why it is called 'hotel', but it will hopefully help you remember that the stress is actually on the second syllable.
Jakub Marian
#69. One man's modus ponens is another man's reductio, as epistemologists are forever pointing out (In Critical Condition, p. 70)
Jerry A. Fodor
#70. 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
#71. ( ... ) Language acquisition might be like other biological functions. The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age is the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
Steven Pinker
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. Not everyone who knows how to write can be a writer. Not everyone who knows two languages can be a translator.
Nataly Kelly
#76. Chantal is having a relationship with a sentence. Just one of those things. A chance meeting that grew into something important for the both of them.
Neil Gaiman
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. People's sense of how they talk tends to differ from the reality.
John McWhorter
#81. 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
#82. All communication involves faith; indeed, some linguisticians hold that the potential obstacles to acts of verbal understanding are so many and diverse that it is a minor miracle that they take place at all.
Terry Eagleton
#83. 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
#84. To discuss endlessly what silly people mean when they say silly things may be amusing but can hardly be important.
Bertrand Russell
#85. I should think a dead language would be rather boring, socially
speaking.
Sol Luckman
#86. To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.
Frantz Fanon
#87. Nothing is more usual than for philosophers to encroach upon the province of grammarians; and to engage in disputes of words, while they imagine that they are handling controversies of the deepest importance and concern.
David Hume
#88. I would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.
Mark Twain
#89. Language, never forget, is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.
Bill Bryson
#90. 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
#91. [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.
#92. 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
#93. There are only two things in the world: nothing and semantics.
Werner Erhard
#94. 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
#95. The language looks rather different when you look at a lot of it at once.
John Sinclair
#97. 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
#98. If we should be worrying about anything to do with the future of English, it should not be that the various strands will drift apart but that they will grow indistinguishable. And what a sad, sad loss that would be.
Bill Bryson
#99. There are ten parts of speech and they are all troublesome.
Mark Twain
#100. 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
