In 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 SaussureWritten forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.
Ferdinand de SaussureHenceforth, language studies were no longer directed merely towards correcting grammar.
Ferdinand de SaussureIt is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and how language lives, carries on and changes over time.
Ferdinand de Saussure