“Meaning… is to be regarded as a complex of contextual relations, and phonetics, grammar, lexicography, and semantics each handles its own components of the complex in its appropriate context.”

—  John Rupert Firth

Source: "The Technique of Semantics." 1935, p. 54

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Meaning… is to be regarded as a complex of contextual relations, and phonetics, grammar, lexicography, and semantics ea…" by John Rupert Firth?
John Rupert Firth photo
John Rupert Firth 14
English linguist 1890–1960

Related quotes

Slavoj Žižek photo

“If the West has its military-industrial complex, we in the ex-Yugoslavia had a poetic military complex: the post-Yugoslav was was triggered by a mixture of poetic and military components.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Vacillating the Semblances
Less Than Nothing (2012)

Talcott Parsons photo

“System' is the concept that refers both to a complex of interdependencies between parts, components, and processes, that involves discernible regularities of relationships, and to a similar type of interdependency between such a complex and its surrounding environment.”

Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) American sociologist

Talcott Parsons (1968) "Systems Analysis: Social Systems" in: David L. Sills ed. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. p. 458; Cited in: Ida R. Hoos (1972) Systems Analysis in Public Policy: A Critique.

“The comprehensiveness of OR’s aim is an example of a ‘systems’ approach, since ‘system’ implies an interconnected complex of functionally related components.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Introduction to Operations Research (1957), p. 7; cited in Werner Ulrich (2004, p. 210)

John Rupert Firth photo

“The complete meaning of a word is always contextual, and no study of meaning apart from context can be taken seriously.”

John Rupert Firth (1890–1960) English linguist

Source: "The Technique of Semantics." 1935, p. 37

“The grammar of Panini stands supreme among the grammars of the world, alike for its precision of statement, and for its thorough analysis of the roots of the language and of the formative principles of words. By employing an algebraic terminology, it attains a sharp succinctness unrivalled in brevity, but at times enigmatical. It arranges, in logical harmony, the whole phenomena which the Sanskrit language presents, and stands forth as one of the most splendid achievements of human invention and industry. So elaborate is the structure, that doubts have arisen whether its complex rules of formation and phonetic change, its polysyllabic derivatives, its ten conjugations with their multiform aorists and long array of tenses, could ever have been the spoken language of a people.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

—Sir William Wilson Hunter, .Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.

Jane Roberts photo

“Value fulfillment itself is most difficult to describe, for it combines the nature of a loving presence - a presence with the innate knowledge of its own divine complexity - with a creative ability of infinite proportions that seeks to bring to fulfillment even the slightest, most distant portion of its own inverted complexity. Translated into simpler terms, each portion of energy is endowed with an inbuilt reach of creativity that seeks to fulfill its own potentials in all possible variations - and in such a way that such a development also furthers the creative potentials of each other portion of reality.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 884, Page 138
Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume One (1986)

Fred Brooks photo

“The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one. Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity often abstracts away its essence.”

Fred Brooks No Silver Bullet

Page 183.
No Silver Bullet (1986)

C. Northcote Parkinson photo

“Expansion means complexity, and complexity decay.”

C. Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993) British naval historian

Cited in: Ian Charles Jarvie (2014), Towards a Sociology of the Cinema (ILS 92). p. 34
In-laws and Outlaws, (1962)

Michael Halliday photo

“A physical system is just that: a physical system. What is systematized is matter itself, and the processes in which the system is realized are also material. But a biological system is more complex: it is both biological and physical — it is matter with the added component of life; and a social system is more complex still: it is physical, and biological, with the added component of social order, or value. … A semiotic system is still one step further in complexity: it is physical, and biological, and social —and also semiotic: what is being systematized is meaning. In evolutionary terms, it is a system of the fourth order of complexity”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Michael Halliday (2005, p. 68) as cited in: Andrew Halliday and Marion Glaser (2011) "A Management Perspective on Social Ecological Systems". In: Human Ecology Review, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2011.
1970s and later

“The notion of system we are interested in may be described generally as a complex of elements or components directly or indirectly related in a network of interrelationships of various kinds, such that it constitutes a dynamic whole with emergent properties.”

Walter F. Buckley (1922–2006) American sociologist

Source: Society: A Complex Adaptive System--Essays in Social Theory, (1998), p. 35 as cited in: Kenneth D. Bailey (2006) A Typology of Emergence in Social Systems and Sociocybernetic Theory http://www.unizar.es/sociocybernetics/congresos/DURBAN/papers/bailey.pdf.

Related topics