tripshwa.blogg.se - Language by Edward Sapir

Fashion is custom in the guise of departure from custom.As cited in: Geza Revesz, The Origins and Prehistory of Language, London 1956.Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.

Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent.

Were a language ever completely "grammatical" it would be a perfect engine of conceptual expression.

"American Indian Grammatical Categories", edited by Morris Swadesh in Word, 2 (1946).

If a notion is lacking in a given series, it implies a different configuration and not a lack of expressive power. Any concept, whether or not it forms part of the system of grammatical categories, can be conveyed in any language.

It would be naïve to imagine that any analysis of experience is dependent on pattern expressed in language.

Cultural Anthropology and Psychiatry (1932), p.

It is valuable because it is constantly rediscovering the normal.

Cultural anthropology is not valuable because it uncovers the archaic in the psychological sense.

69Ĭultural anthropology is not valuable because it uncovers the archaic in the psychological sense.

The Status Of Linguistics As A Science (1929), p.

The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached … We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.

The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.… It seems to me that only now that is American linguistics becoming really interesting, at least in its ethnological bearings. Getting down to brass tacks, how in the Hell are you going to explain general American n- 'I' except genetically? It's disturbing, I know, but (more) non-committal conservatism is only dodging, after all, isn't it? Great simplifications are in store for us.