The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a total coherent system of these integrating with each other, and with behavior, context, universe of discourse, and observer perspective.
I have my own vocabulary. I love linguistics. That surprises people.
Now between the meanings of words and their sounds there is ordinarily no discoverable relation except one of accident; and it is therefore miraculous, to the mystic, when words which make sense can also make a uniform objective structure of accents and rhymes.
On the other hand, in a society whose communication component is becoming more prominent day by day, both as a reality and as an issue, it is clear that language assumes a new importance.
Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about but is always spreading around.
The pull between sound and syntax creates a kind of musical tension in the language that interests me.
The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.
Ambiguity is very interesting in writing; it's not very interesting in science.
I'm very interested in language because it reflects our obsessions and ways of conceptualising the world.
Language is memory and metaphor.
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