Semantics, or the study of meaning, remained undeveloped, while phonetics made rapid progress and even came to occupy the central place in the scientific study of language.

A new era in the physiological investigation of linguistic sounds was opened up by X-ray photography.

It is once again the vexing problem of identity within variety; without a solution to this disturbing problem there can be no system, no classification.

Linguistic sounds, considered as external, physical phenomena have two aspects, the motor and the acoustic.

The poetic function is the set towards the message itself, focus on the message for its own sake which by promoting the palpability of signs, deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects.

Acoustic phonetics, which is developing and increasing in richness very rapidly, already enables us to solve many of the mysteries of sound, mysteries which motor phonetics could not even begin to solve.

A linguist deaf to the poetic functions of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistics are equally flagrant anachronisms.