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

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.

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

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.

At first acoustics attributed to the different sounds only a limited number of characteristic features.

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