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.

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.

Bilingualism is for me the fundamental problem of linguistics.

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

In poetic language, in which the sign as such takes on an autonomous value, this sound symbolism becomes an actual factor and creates a sort of accompaniment to the signified.

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.