26 Quotes by Roman Jakobson

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.

When I speak it is in order to be heard.

A new era in the physiological investigation of linguistic sounds was opened up by X-ray photography.

Every linguistic sign is located on two axes: the axis of simultaneity and that of succession.

Acoustic phonetics, which is developing and increasing in richness very rapidly, already enables us to solve many of the mysteries of sound, mysteries which motor phonetics could not even begin to solve.

It is once again the vexing problem of identity within variety; without a solution to this disturbing problem there can be no system, no classification.

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.

Linguistic sounds, considered as external, physical phenomena have two aspects, the motor and the acoustic.

Now the identification of individual sounds by phonetic observation is an artificial way of proceeding.