#linguistic

You must be able to write. You must have a sense of form, of pattern, of design. You must have a respect for and a mastery over words. ↗

— Ngaio Marsh

#writing #death

No important national language, at least in the Occidental world, has complete regularity of grammatical structure, nor is there a single logical category which is adequately and consistently handled in terms of linguistic symbolism. ↗

— Edward Sapir

#category #complete #consistently #grammatical #handled

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

#belongs #cases #define #domain #independent

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

#change

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

#language #linguistics #lojban #change

In the world “out there,” there are no verbs, no speech events, and no adjacency pairs. There are particles of matter moving around in certain recurrent and yet not fully predictable patterns. We interpret such experiences as and through symbolic means, including linguistic expressions. That’s what it means to be human. ↗

— Duranti a Alessandro

#linguistic-anthropology #linguistics #experience

نجد أن الفن الحداثي يزداد ابهاما وتعقيدا حتى اصبح فنا نخبويا رغم ثورته على البرجوازية ↗

— عبد الوهاب المسيري

#linguistics #literature #inspirational

To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. ↗

— Frantz Fanon

#politics #psychology #culture

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

#nature #nature

From that historically brief quite opaque moment, came the chaos of our material history, an anarchy of chronology, of mismatched remnants that delighted and horrified investigators. ↗

— China Miéville

#beauty