Amoebas, once they have themselves well pulled in two, go their ways-they practice divorce, but no remarriage.

Quite naturally, scholars assumed that Latin grammar was not merely Latin grammar, but that it was grammar itself. They borrowed it and made the most of it.

Babies and language are the essential ingredients of civilization, and speakers of language no more know where it came from than babies know where they come from.

If language is intimately related to being human, then when we study language we are, to a remarkable degree, studying human nature.

Man can be defined, if one wishes, as a languag-ized mammal.

An amoeba is a formless thing which takes many shapes. It moves by thrusting out an arm, and flowing into the arm. It multiplies by pulling itself in two, without permanently diminishing the original. So with words. A meaning may develop on the periphery of the body of meanings associated with a word, and shortly this tentacle-meaning has grown to such proportions that it dwarfs all other meanings.

Amoebas, once they have themselves well pulled in two, go their ways-they practice divorce, but no remarriage.