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"Fashion is custom in the guise of departure from custom."
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Edward SapirWere a language ever completely "grammatical" it would be a perfect en — Edward Sapir
"Were a language ever completely "grammatical" it would be a perfect engine of conceptual expression. Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak."
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Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir
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Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, and one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States. Born in German Pomerania, in what is now northern Poland, his family emigrated to the United States of America when he was a child. He studied Germanic linguistics at Columbia, where he came under the influence of Franz Boas, who insp
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"Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols."
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Edward SapirQuote
"Getting down to brass tacks, how in the Hell are you going to explain general American n- I except genetically? Its disturbing, I know, but (more) non-committal conservatism is only dodging, after all, isnt it? Great simplifications are in store for us. … It seems to me that only now that is American linguistics becoming really interesting, at least in its ethnological bearings."
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Edward SapirQuote
"It would be naïve to imagine that any analysis of experience is dependent on pattern expressed in language. Any concept, whether or not it forms part of the system of grammatical categories, can be conveyed in any language. If a notion is lacking in a given series, it implies a different configuration and not a lack of expressive power."
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Edward SapirQuote
"Human beings do not wish to be modest; they want to be as expressive — that is, as immodest — as fear allows; fashion helps them solve that paradoxical problem."
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Edward Sapir