The core problem of human language ... I take to be this: having mastered a language, one is able to understand an indefinite numb...er of expressions that are new to one's experience, they bear no simple physical resemblance and are in no simple way analogous to the expressions that constitute one's linguistic experience; and one is able, with greater or less facility, to produce such expressions on an appropriate occasion, despite their novelty, and independently of detecting stimulus configurations, and to be understood by others who share this mysterious ability.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are thus assisted by natural objects in the expression of particular meanings. But how great a language to convey such pepper-c...orn informations!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a comman...ding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language.... To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to gras...p the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Which I wish to remark-- And my language is plain--... That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar: Which the same I would rise to explain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »