Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.
Ferdinand de SaussureWithin speech, words are subject to a kind of relation that is independent of the first and based on their linkage: these are syntagmatic relations, of which I have spoken.
Ferdinand de SaussureIn fact, from then on scholars engaged in a kind of game of comparing different Indo-European languages with one another, and eventually they could not fail to wonder what exactly these connections showed, and how they should be interpreted in concrete terms.
Ferdinand de Saussure