Quote

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.

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
Would
Engines
Grammars
Unfortunately
Grammatical
Consistent
Leak
Completely
Leaks
Expression
Luckily
Perfect
Conceptual
Language
Engine
Ever
Grammar

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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.
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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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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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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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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.
Edward Sapir
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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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Both French and Latin are involved with nationalistic and religious implications which could not be entirely shaken off, and so, while they seemed for a long time to have solved the international language problem up to a certain point, they did not really do so in spirit.
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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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In a sense, every form of expression is imposed upon one by social factors, one's own language above all.
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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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A standard international language should not only be simple, regular, and logical, but also rich and creative.
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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.
Edward Sapir
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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.
Edward Sapir
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What fetters the mind and benumbs the spirit is ever the dogged acceptance of absolutes.
Edward Sapir
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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.
Edward Sapir
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Fashion is custom in the guise of departure from custom
Edward Sapir
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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.
Edward Sapir
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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.
Edward Sapir
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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.
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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.
Edward Sapir