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.

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

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

Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.

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

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.