‘the process of creating new words shows how enormously flexible the human mind is in coping with vocabulary. The lexical tool-kit contains instructions and guidelines as to how to make up new words, and in order to do this is makes use of the back-up information attached to each word, showing how it can be split up, and other words to which it is related. The creation of new words reinforces a viewpoint which we have already reached: that the mental lexicon is not a fixed dictionary with a set amount of information about each word, but an active system in which new links are perpetually being formed.’
‘When producing a word, humans must pick the meaning before the sound. When recognizing a word, they must start with the sounds, then move on to the meaning. However, we cannot take it for granted that they utilize the sames processes in a different order, just as we cannot automatically assume tht going upstairs uses identical muscles to going down but in the reverse sequence.’
Jean Aitchison (1987), p.162, p.165
‘When we speak, we are continually giving out signals about our emotional state, our mood, our attitude towards the speakers in the conversation and towards the topic of the conversation itself. Some of these signals are non verbal. Facial exoression, posture and gesture can all tell our conversational partners how we are feeling. Some of the signals, however are connected with the way we are actually speaking. These include the tempo of our speech, the overall loudness, the overall pitch range, the frequency of pauses and the type of phonation that we use. Such aspects of our speech are known as paralinguistic features.’
Michael Ashby, Michael and John Maidment (2005), p.171
‘The existence of thought without words but not without forms is nevetheless necessary, for example, to all translation work. Every good translator does his utmost, without actually realizing it, to translate his text first into sphota, in order to restranslate into the second language.’
sphota : ‘word-seeds’
René Daumal (1941), p.10
‘”In our style of music, every melodic line is an unbroken arc and you can’t build arcs like that with English sounds. I think that music is just refined speech. It has to draw on sounds from the indigenous language of the region. To say that music is a universal language is sentimental wishful nonsense. Someone whose mother tongue is Urdu or Hindi has better prospects as a khayal singer than say someone from Japan, however ardently interested.”‘ (Fayyaz Ahmed Khan)
‘In our life style, it was natural for me to be bilingual but when I turned off the English switch entirely, the sounds in my head really changed. I felt myself change as a person too.’
Sheila Dhar (1995), p.114
‘Intonation is another way in which we can be aware of the voice, for the particular tone of voice, its particular melody and modulation, its cadence and inflection, can decide the meaning. Intonation can turn the meaning of a sentence upside down; it can transform it into its opposite. A slight note of irony, and a serious meaning comes tumbling down; a note of distress, and the joke will backfire. Linguistic competence crucially includes not only phonology, but also the ability to cope with intonation and its multiple uses.’
Mladen Dolar (2006), p.21
‘Do you know what communication is for me? Communication is when people don’t understand each other. That’s what communication is. Because then there is a consciousness level that is being brought out of you, where an effort is made.’
Morton Feldman (1985), p.241
‘By indulging sensory, sensual, emotional and physical responses to vowels and consonants – the component parts of words – we begin to resurrect the life of language.’
Kristin Linklater (1992), p.13
‘It is generally assumed that the spoken word came before the written word. I suggest that the spoken word came after the written word.’
‘The study of hieroglyphic languages shows us that a word is an image… the written word is an image. However, there is an important difference between a hieroglyphic and a syllabic language. If I hold up a sign with the word “ROSE” written on it, and you read that sign, you will be forced to repeat the word “ROSE” to yourself. If I show you a picture of a rose you do not have to repeat the word. You can register the image in silence. A syllabic language forces you to verbalize in auditory patterns. A hieroglyphic language does not.’
‘Techniques now being used for control of thought could be used instead for liberation. With computerized tape recorders and sensitive throat microphones we could attain insight into the nature of human speech and turn the word into a useful tool instead of an instrument of control in the hands of a misinformed and misinforming press.’
Daniel Odier (1974, 1989), p. 11, p.59, pp.137 – 138
‘When we venture to push forward in the domain of speech via the vowel to the consonant corresponding to it and to arrive in the musical realm through the interval as far as the single note, then we really become, from practice producing this changing relationship, a traveller through different worlds.’
Lea van der Pals (1981), p.42
‘No text can be completely original because langauge itself, in its very essence, is already a translation – first from the nonverbal world, and then, because each sign and each phrase is a translation of another sign, another phrase. However, the inverse of this reasoning is also entirely valid. All texts are originals because each translation has its own distinctive character. Up to a point, each translation is a creation and thus constitutes a unique text.’
Octavio Paz (1971), p.154
‘That you are formed as you are today, that this human body has its present shape, rests upon the fact that the “Word” lies at the very foundation of the whole plan of our creation. The whole human body has been constructed upon the Word and from the very beginning it was so endowed that at last the Word was able to spring forth from it.’
Rudolf Steiner (1940), p.39