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The search for the symbolic value of phonemes, each taken as a whole, runs the risk of giving rise to ambiguous and trivial interpretations because phonemes are complex entities, bundles of different distinctive features.

Roman Jakobson

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Roman Jakobson
Age: 85 †
Born: 1896
Born: September 28
Died: 1982
Died: July 18
Critic
Historian
Linguist
Literary Scholar
Pedagogue
Teacher
Writer
Moscow
Russian SFSR
Roman Jakobsson
Different
Rise
Symbolic
Value
Entity
Bundles
Risk
Runs
Interpretations
Taken
Interpretation
Entities
Values
Features
Ambiguous
Running
Complexes
Distinctive
Whole
Complex
Corny
Giving
Search
Trivial

More quotes by Roman Jakobson

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Every linguistic sign is located on two axes: the axis of simultaneity and that of succession.
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Semantics, or the study of meaning, remained undeveloped, while phonetics made rapid progress and even came to occupy the central place in the scientific study of language.
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Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.
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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.
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Speech sounds cannot be understood, delimited, classified and explained except in the light of the tasks which they perform in language.
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A linguist deaf to the poetic functions of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistics are equally flagrant anachronisms.
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When I speak it is in order to be heard.
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A new era in the physiological investigation of linguistic sounds was opened up by X-ray photography.
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Now the identification of individual sounds by phonetic observation is an artificial way of proceeding.
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What's next? Shall we appoint elephants to teach zoology?
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Remember that the pharynx is at a crossroads from which leads off, at the top, the passage to the mouth cavity and the passage to the nasal cavity, and below, the passage to the larynx.
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