An invention or new combination can be successful only if all if the elements necessary for the recombination are present in the culture.

People who speak the same language can hate one another as easily as can people who speak unrelated languages.

The environment does not determine man's culture; it merely sets the outer limits and at the same time offers opportunities.

A complex society is not necessarily more advanced than a simple one; it has just adapted to conditions in a more complicated way.

Native speakers of a language know intuitively whether a sentence is grammatical or not. They usually cannot specify exactly what is wrong, and very possibly they make the same mistakes in their own speech, but they know-unconsciously, not as a set of rules they learned in school-when a sentence is incorrect.

Gestures and facial expressions do indeed communicate, as anyone can prove by turning off the sound on a television set and asking watchers to characterize the speakers from the picture alone.

Speakers who have grown up in the American community unconsciously know its rules about taking turns in conversations-in the same way that they know the rules of grammar and the rules about appropriate speech in various situations.