“It would be naïve to imagine that any analysis of experience is dependent on pattern expressed in language.”

—  Edward Sapir

"American Indian Grammatical Categories", edited by Morris Swadesh in Word, 2 (1946)
Context: 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.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 21, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It would be naïve to imagine that any analysis of experience is dependent on pattern expressed in language." by Edward Sapir?
Edward Sapir photo
Edward Sapir 10
American linguist and anthropologist 1884–1939

Related quotes

TY Bello photo
Adam Schaff photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“Language always preserves a play or figure/ground relation between experience, and perception and its replay in expression.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 121

Bjarne Stroustrup photo

“Anybody who comes to you and says he has a perfect language is either naïve or a salesman.”

Bjarne Stroustrup (1950) Danish computer scientist, creator of C++

in C++ 0x - An Overview at University of Waterloo Computer Science Club http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/media/C++0x%20-%20An%20Overview.html

Claude Lévi-Strauss photo

“One must be very naïve or dishonest to imagine that men choose their beliefs independently of their situation.”

Source: Tristes Tropiques (1955), Chapter 16 : Markets, p. 148

Ward Cunningham photo

“My specific purpose for the first wiki was to create an environment where we might link together each other's experience to discover the pattern language of programming.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Exploring with Wiki
Context: My specific purpose for the first wiki was to create an environment where we might link together each other's experience to discover the pattern language of programming. I had previously worked with a HyperCard stack that was set up to achieve the same kind of goal. I knew people liked to read and author in that HyperCard stack, but it was single user.

Albert A. Michelson photo
Ezra Pound photo

Related topics