Bilingualism is for me the fundamental problem of linguistics.

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

The function of poetry is to point out that the sign is not identical to the referent.

Every linguistic sign is located on two axes: the axis of simultaneity and that of succession.

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.

Speech sounds cannot be understood, delimited, classified and explained except in the light of the tasks which they perform in language.

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.