Grammar is not a set of rules; it is something inherent in the language, and language cannot exist without it. It can be discovered, but not invented.

The great arbiters of language are the women who speak it in the presence of children... What the women pass on to the next generation is "right" and what they do not bother to pass on to their children sooner or later becomes "wrong.

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

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.

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

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

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.