Quotes About Linguistic

The central argument of structuralism is in essence a restatement of the discredited argument of linguistic positivism that language is the only reality since knowledge can only be expressed and communicated in linguistic form.

If you love language, it will love you back.

Most of my friends, growing up, were upper-middle-class white kids, so it was a different reality at home both culturally and linguistically. It created a lot of insecurities for me, but it also did a lot of amazing things that I didn't know were happening at the time.

I have set out to change the language of the international system.

Those five domains—body, aesthetics or play, sociability, family, and work—are the domains we claim to be conditions for linguistic existence.

India's linguistic diversity surprises many Westerners, but there are nearly thirty languages in India with at least a million native speakers. There are more native speakers of Tamil on our planet than of Italian. Likewise, more people speak Punjabi than German, Marathi than French, and Bengali than Russian. There are more Telugu speakers than Czech, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Slovak, and Swedish speakers combined .

This movement between alternative linguistic modes conceived as alternative descriptive protocols is, I would argue, a distinguishing feature of all the great classics of the 'literature of fact.

I've studied authoritarianism for a very long time - for 40 years - and they're started by people's attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory.

For me, it's a big challenge to translate everything in English.

Now I know Hindi, and I can read and write Hindi, but the problem is that I can't improvise when I am acting because I think in English, so I have to translate my thinking from English to Hindi, and therefore, I speak slowly.

I wanted as little formal linguistic theory as I could get by with. I wanted the basic linguistic training to do a translation of the New Testament.

The only problem was that I couldn't communicate with Dario. He speaks Italian and I don't. We had a translator the whole time. I just felt that something was lost with the go between. He was a delightful man, but I wish we could have spoken the same language.

camouflage (rather oddly from camouflet, meaning "to blow smoke up someone's nose," a pastime that appears on the linguistic evidence to be specific to the French)

A pesar de que tiene dos lenguas, el bilingüe habla como si siempre le faltara algo, en permanente estado de necesidad.

The job of a subordinating conjunction is (drum roll, please) to subordinate. It relegates a clause to a lower grammatical status in the sentence.

En el Caribe cuando alguien habla bien tiene el respeto de la gente y de pequeño yo veía eso y me encantaba. Supongo que como a nosotros nos impusieron ese idioma colonial [el español] la resistencia consistió en eso: "Ok, tengo que aprenderlo, pero lo voy a convertir en oportunidad".

Since we routinely express ideas and feelings in language, we may be forgiven for assigning a role to it, but isn't it remarkable how often we struggle to find our words? It's not that we don't know what we thought or felt, but we just can't put our verbal finger on it. This would of course be wholly unnecessary if thoughts and feelings were linguistic products to begin with. In that case, we'd expect a waterfall of words!

Inexorably accurate translation from Latin provides a training in observation, analysis, judgment, evaluation, and a sense of linguistic form, clarity, and beauty which is excellent training in the shaping of one's own English expression," asserted Frederic Wheelock.

Technically," M-Bot said, hovering a few centimeters closer to him, "the word 'sentient' just means an ability to perceive and/or feel. Many people misuse this word. Instead, 'sapience' is the word for self-awareness—or intelligence like a human being. Which if you think about it is a human-centric definition. Those rascally humans and their linguistic biases.

vulnerability is derived from the Latin word vulnerare, meaning "to wound." The definition includes "capable of being wounded" and "open to attack or damage." Merriam-Webster defines weakness as the inability to withstand attack or wounding. Just from a linguistic perspective, it's clear that these are very different concepts, and in fact, one could argue that weakness often stems from a lack of vulnerability

We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of a common mint. (Letter, April 26, 1857, to B.B. Wiley)

Her fluency was marvelous. She would say things at random, intricate, flamelike, or slide off into a parenthetical limbo peppered with fireworks-- admirable linguistic feats which a practiced writer might struggle for hours to achieve.

English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies.

I've found the world's most versatile word - 'cheeky.' The amount of ways you guys can use the word 'cheeky' is quite impressive.