20th-century Linguist Quotes

J. M. Coetzee

Octavio Paz

Julio Cortázar

Snježana Kordić

André Brink

George Lakoff

Benjamin Lee Whorf

We shall work not on the macrocosmic scale of the literary forms, but on the microcosmic scale of the lexical forms.

All creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice.

I'm such a jerk; it had never occurred to me that when we look at a photo from the front, the eyes reproduce exactly the position and the vision of the lens; it's these things that are taken for granted and it never occurs to anyone to think about them.

Julio Cortázar

This period is characterized by a diversity of textual transmissions undreamed of two decades ago.

Moshe Goshen-Gottstein

It is generally believed that scientific talent reveals itself in early youth. [...] This was certainly not my case. I somehow slid into my scientific profession. My mother wished for me to become a physician, just like my father. [...] I myself wanted to be a lawyer, defender of the unjustly accused. But my career is the result of political circumstances, academic possibilities, and lucky accidents.

Science is fundamentally a moral enterprise, following the moral imperative to seek the truth.

That is a complete waste of your time and the government's money. You are a native speaker of English; in ten minutes you can produce more illustrations of any point in English grammar than you will find in many millions of words of random text.

If only there were a lexicographer of Liang Shih-ch'iu's ability who also had the perspicuity to arrange his dictionary by sound rather than radical! … No wonder most of us are so sour and gray by the time we reach fifty! The amount of time consumed and the spirit expended in this sort of meaningless, not to mention destructive, type of activity is beyond calculation.

For Borges, the core of reality lay in books; reading books, writing books, talking about books. In a visceral way, he was conscious of continuing a dialogue begun thousands of years before and which he believed would never end.

Alberto Manguel

Barefoot girl-child
weeping at her grandma's door,
her disquiet deep:
autumn's limping in. No beauty in a cold heart...
the cock won't crow again.
"Who are you sorry for, so?"
"Everyone," she says.

Life is not historical, but something more like nature.

The Macedonian language is actually an artifact produced for primarily political reasons.

If you give yourself that short little moment of thinking, then you cannot miss it.

A physical system is just that: a physical system. What is systematized is matter itself, and the processes in which the system is realized are also material. But a biological system is more complex: it is both biological and physical — it is matter with the added component of life; and a social system is more complex still: it is physical, and biological, with the added component of social order, or value. … A semiotic system is still one step further in complexity: it is physical, and biological, and social —and also semiotic: what is being systematized is meaning. In evolutionary terms, it is a system of the fourth order of complexity

Michael Halliday

Who wants to be a linguist must apply consistently linguistic criteria, not tinkering to comply with policy needs, creating the illusion that one stands still in the field of science.

Snježana Kordić

There are only two reasons for buying a book, after all. Either we intend to read it, in which case most of us find a printed version preferable, or we don't intend to read it, in which case a printed version is absolutely essential.

Geoffrey Nunberg

My analysis was directed toward purely physical conditions, such as defective wiring, presence of lack of air spaces between metal flues and woodwork, etc., and the results were presented in these terms.

Benjamin Lee Whorf

There is only one type of decadence which is dangerous in art and literature, and unfortunately critics seldom scourge it as it deserves: it consists in being conventional and imitative, in tritely expressing cheap and superficial emotions.

The nomadic Semite... roves as a herdsman, partaking of Allah's hospitality.

Cyrus H. Gordon

Big dictionaries are nothing but storerooms with infrequently visited and dusty corners.

Richard W. Bailey

Man does not live on bread alone; his other necessity is communication.

Charles F. Hockett

Girls are not accustomed to jockeying for status in an obvious way; they are more concerned that they be liked.

Pragmatics studies the factors that govern our choice of language in social interaction and the effects of our choice on others.

A community is known by the language it keeps, and its words chronicle the times. Every aspect of the life of a people is reflected in the words they use to talk about themselves and the world around them. As their world changes — through invention, discovery, revolution, evolution, or personal transformation — so does their language.

Word meanings are like stretchy pullovers, whose outline contour is visible, but whose detailed shape varies with use.