In poetic language, in which the sign as such takes on an autonomous value, this sound symbolism becomes an actual factor and creates a sort of accompaniment to the signified.

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.

Linguistic sounds, considered as external, physical phenomena have two aspects, the motor and the acoustic.

Every linguistic sign is located on two axes: the axis of simultaneity and that of succession.

Now the identification of individual sounds by phonetic observation is an artificial way of proceeding.

What's next? Shall we appoint elephants to teach zoology?

Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.

Bilingualism is for me the fundamental problem of linguistics.

The function of poetry is to point out that the sign is not identical to the referent.

When I speak it is in order to be heard.

A new era in the physiological investigation of linguistic sounds was opened up by X-ray photography.

Be sure to bend but never break

It is hard to be kind to those who smack the hands that feed you.

I still think that, in a way, I can't get past half my childhood dogmas.

Youth isn't all it's cracked up to be either.""Then you're doing it wrong.

Le biologiste passe, la grenouille reste. The biologist passes, the frog remains.

Blank pages inspire me with terror.

The better portion of all sales I have made were made after people had said 'no'.

I led a sheltered life. I didn't know how to book a flight.

No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking.

Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom.