Цитаты из книги Язык как инстинкт

язык — это диалект, имеющий армию и флот

Perhaps most importantly, since prescriptive rules are so psychologically unnatural that only those with access to the right schooling can abide by them, they serve as shibboleths, differentiating the elite from the rabble.

Other mouth sounds are not used in any language: scraping teeth, clucking the tongue against the floor of the mouth, making raspberries, and squawking like Donald Duck, for instance.

Indeed, if you put aside the fact that the days of our age are threescore and ten, each of us is capable of uttering an infinite number of different sentences.

With one word, my gentlemen, I would your beloved language simplify so that, my gentlemen, when you her for prayer need, One her yonder-up understands.

даже если в генах заложены основы строения языка, языковую специфику должна сообщать окружающая среда, так чтобы язык одного человека был приведен в соответствие с языком остальных, несмотря на генетическую уникальность каждого.

Младенец XXI века сумеет отомстить за Уинстона Смита

Существуют сообщества, находящиеся на уровне каменного века, но не существует такого понятия, как язык уровня каменного века.

Our Latin teacher [...] tried to persuade us that Latin grammar honed the mind with its demands for precision, logic, and consistency. (Nowadays such arguments are more likely to come from the computer programming teachers.)

Идея о том, что мышление и язык - одно и то же, - это пример того, что может быть названо общепринятым заблуждением: некое утверждение противоречит самому очевидному, но тем не менее, все в него верят, поскольку каждый смутно помнит, что он это где-то слышал или потому что это утверждение можно истолковать неоднозначно.

No one would dream of saying I can't get no satisfaction out of the blue to boast that he easily attains contentment.

Gretchen: Wilhelm, where is the turnip? Wilhelm: She has gone to the kitchen. Gretchen: Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden? Wilhelm: It has gone to the opera.

The psychologists Jacques Mehler and Peter Jusczyk have shown that four-day-old French babies suck harder to hear French than Russian, and pick up their sucking more when a tape changes from Russian to French than from French to Russian.

When we put words into people's ears we are impinging on them and revealing our own intentions, honorable or not, just as surely as if we were touching them.

"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

That that that he left is apparent is clear is obvious.

A society of lazy talkers would be a society of hard-working listeners.