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.

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

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.

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

Bilingualism is for me the fundamental problem of linguistics.

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

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