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Comparison of statements made at different periods frequently enable us to give maximal and minimal dates to the appearance of a cultural element or to assign the time limits to a movement of population.

Edward Sapir

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Edward Sapir
Age: 55 †
Born: 1884
Born: January 26
Died: 1939
Died: February 4
Anthropologist
Ethnologist
Linguist
Sociolinguist
University Teacher
Lauenburg
Made
Population
Dates
Time
Periods
Enable
Limits
Frequently
Elements
Comparison
Movement
Element
Give
Cultural
Maximal
Giving
Statements
Assign
Different
Appearance
Minimal

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A standard international language should not only be simple, regular, and logical, but also rich and creative.
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In a sense, every form of expression is imposed upon one by social factors, one's own language above all.
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Impatience translates itself into a desire to have something immediate done about it all, and, as is generally the case with impatience, resolves itself in the easiest way that lies ready to hand.
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Nonverbal communication is an elaborate secret code that is written nowhere, known by none, and understood by all.
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I am convinced that the stratigraphic method will in the future enable archaeology to throw far more light on the history of American culture than it has done in the past.
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A second type of direct evidence is formed by statements, whether as formal legends or personal information, regarding the age or relative sequence of events in tribal history made by the natives themselves.
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It is no secret that the fruits of language study are in no sort of relation to the labour spent on teaching and learning them.
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Were a language ever completely grammatical it would be a perfect engine of conceptual expression. Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.
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Human beings do not wish to be modest they want to be as expressive - that is, as immodest - as fear allows fashion helps them solve that paradoxical problem.
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A common creation demands a common sacrifice, and perhaps not the least potent argument in favour of a constructed international language is the fact that it is equally foreign, or apparently so, to the traditions of all nationalities.
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No important national language, at least in the Occidental world, has complete regularity of grammatical structure, nor is there a single logical category which is adequately and consistently handled in terms of linguistic symbolism.
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It would, of course, be hopeless to attempt to crowd into an international language all those local overtones of meaning which are so dear to the heart of the nationalist.
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Cultural anthropology is not valuable because it uncovers the archaic in the psychological sense. It is valuable because it is constantly rediscovering the normal.
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As a matter of fact, a national language which spreads beyond its own confines very quickly loses much of its original richness of content and is in no better case than a constructed language.
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The psychology of a language which, in one way or another, is imposed upon one because of factors beyond one's control, is very different from the psychology of a language which one accepts of one's free will.
Edward Sapir
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A firm, for instance, that does business in many countries of the world is driven to spend an enormous amount of time, labour, and money in providing for translation services.
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Fashion is custom in the guise of departure from custom
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The spirit of logical analysis should in practice blend with the practical pressure for the adoption of some form of international language, but it should not allow itself to be stampeded by it.
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What fetters the mind and benumbs the spirit is ever the dogged acceptance of absolutes.
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We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.
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