1. Cytaty
  2. Autorzy
  3. Michel Bréal

Michel Bréal cytaty

Michel Jules Alfred Bréal – lingwista francuski, twórca semantyki.

✵ 26. Marzec 1832 – 25. Listopad 1915
Michel Bréal Fotografia
Michel Bréal: 11   Cytatów 0   Polubień

Michel Bréal cytaty

„Chodziłoby o zawarcie układu między Francją, Anglją i Stanami Zjednoczonemi, układu nie politycznego ani handlowego, tylko językowego, na mocy którego francuski i angielski byłyby odtąd w nauczaniu tych trzech państw urzędowo sprzymierzonemi. Angielskiego uczonoby obowiązkowo we Francji, a francuskiego w Anglji i w Stanach Ameryki północnej, i to nietylko w uniwersytetach i średnich zakładach, ale także w pewnych szkołach elementarnych wielkich miast. Skutki takiego układu dałyby się wnet odczuć, bo oba języki, uczynione w ten sposób środkiem obcowania 180 miljonów ludzi, zyskałyby za jednym zamachem rodzaj przewagi.”

Michel Bréal

Źródło: „Reuve de Paris”, 15 lipca 1901, cyt. za: Jan Michał Rozwadowski, O język międzynarodowy, „Język Polski” nr 1, 1920

O ludziach

Michel Bréal: Cytaty po angielsku

“We define law, using the word in the philosophic sense, as the constant relation discoverable in a series of phenomena.”

Help us translate this quote
Michel Bréal

Źródło: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 11

“My intention was to give a general outline, to sketch a general division and, as it were, a provisional plan of a domain that has not been studied so far and which should be the result of work for many generations of linguists. The reader is therefore requested to consider this book a simple introduction to the science which I propose to call semantics.”

Help us translate this quote
Michel Bréal

Źródło: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 9 ; as cited in: Schaff (1962:3).

“In modern society, the meaning of words changes much more quickly than it did in antiquity or even in the recent past. This arises from the intermingling of social classes, the struggle of interests and opinions, the struggle of political parties and the variety of aspirations and tastes.”

Help us translate this quote
Michel Bréal

Źródło: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 104-5 ; as cited in: Schaff (1962:14).

“Sometimes is a synonym which extends itself, and contrasts by just much the domain of its colleague. At other times it is an historical event which comes to modify and renew the vocabulary.”

Help us translate this quote
Michel Bréal

Źródło: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 113, cited in Alessandro Carlucci (2013), Gramsci and Languages: Unification, Diversity, Hegemony. p. 74

“There is a constant succession of books on the subject of comparative grammar, for the use both of students and of the general public; yet it does not seem that we are offered what we really need. Language is full of lessons for those who know how to question it. Through all the centuries humanity has deposited in Language the acquisitions of material and moral life. But it must be approached from the side on which it appeals to the mind. If we limit ourselves to the changes of vowels and consonants, the study is reduced to the proportions of a merely secondary branch of acoustics and physiology; if we think it enough to enumerate the losses undergone *by the machinery of grammar, we give the impression of a building that is falling into ruins; if we confine ourselves to vague theories on the origin of Language, we merely add an unprofitable chapter to the history of systems.”

Help us translate this quote
Michel Bréal

Źródło: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 1; lead paragraph

“We must realize the extent to which it is necessary that our knowledge of language be based on history. Only history can impart to words that degree of precision which we need in order to understand them well.”

Help us translate this quote
Michel Bréal

Źródło: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 112 ; as cited in: Schaff (1962:16).

“Historical grammar is now in a position to confirm or to refute.”

Help us translate this quote
Michel Bréal

Michel Bréal (1877), cited in Jacek Juliusz Jadacki, Witold Strawiński. In the World of Signs: Essays in Honour of Professor Jerzy Pelc. 1998, p. 256

“The so-called pejorative tendency has yet another cause. It is in the nature of human malice to take pleasure in looking for a vice or a fault behind a quality. The French have the adjective prude, which had formerly a good and noble acceptation, since it is the feminine of preux. But the spirit of the narrators (perhaps also some feeling of rancour against the loftier virtues) turned this adjective aside towards the equivocal sense that it now bears. Words which refer to the relations of the sexes are especially exposed to changes of this kind. We remember what a noble signification amant and mattress still possessed in Corneille. But they are dethroned, as was Buhle in German. Here we see the inevitable results of a false delicacy; honourable names are dishonoured by being given to things which are dishonourable.”

Help us translate this quote
Michel Bréal

Źródło: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 101; parly cited in: Geoffrey Hughes (2011). Political Correctness: A History of Semantics and Culture. p. 11

“In that second part we propose to investigate how it happens that words, once created and endowed with a certain meaning, extend that meaning or contract it, transfer it from one group of notions on to another, raise its value or lower it, in a word — bring about changes. It is this second part that constitutes semantics, i. e. science of meaning.”

Help us translate this quote
Michel Bréal

Źródło: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 99 ; as cited in: Schaff (1962:4).

“There is another kind of studies which distinguished from the sometimes opposed to comparative grammar. It is known under the name of general or philosophical grammar, whose principles and observations were articulated by Port Royal and which deals with the relation of the form of language to the operations of the mind.”

Help us translate this quote
Michel Bréal

Michel Bréal (1886), cited in Jacek Juliusz Jadacki, Witold Strawiński. In the World of Signs: Essays in Honour of Professor Jerzy Pelc. 1998, p. 255