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Quote by Jack Edwards

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Jack Edwards
Jack Edwards

Born on March 24, 1957, Jack Edwards is a renowned announcer known for his unique style of commentary and deep understanding of sports events. more

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“An immune system of enormous complexity is present in all vertebrate animals. When we place a population of lymphocytes from such an animal in appropriate tissue culture fluid, and when we add an antigen, the lymphocytes will produce specific antibody molecules, in the absense of any nerve cells. I find it astonishing that the immune system embodies a degree of complexity which suggests some more or less superficial though striking analogies with human language, and that this cognitive system has evolved and functions without assistance of the brain.”

HumansCultureLanguageAnimalBrainProduceDegreesFunctionAddPopulationEnormousCellsComplexityAppropriateNervesSuperficialAssistanceAstonishingFluidImmuneMoleculesAnalogiesCognitiveTissuesImmune SystemHuman LanguageVertebratesAntibodies
Author:Niels Kaj Jerne
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“By a generative grammar I mean simply a system of rules that in some explicit and well-defined way assigns structural descriptions to sentences. Obviously, every speaker of a language has mastered and internalized a generative grammar that expresses his knowledge of his language. This is not to say that he is aware of the rules of the grammar or even that he can become aware of them, or that his statements about his intuitive knowledge of the language are necessarily accurate.”

WayWellsMeanLanguageSentencesStatementsDefinedDescriptionSpeakersAccurateGrammarIntuitiveExplicit
Author:Noam Chomsky
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“Hence, a generative grammar must be a system of rules that can iterate to generate an indefinitely large number of structures. This system of rules can be analyzed into the three major components of a generative grammar: the syntactic, phonological, and semantic components... the syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation. The first of these is interpreted by the semantic component; the second, by the phonological component.”

FirstsThreeLanguageNumbersMajorsStructureDetermineSentencesSurfaceInterpretationComponentsGrammarLarge Numbers
Author:Noam Chomsky
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“I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.”

IdeasMightEarthScienceLostLanguageHeavenWishForgetSonDaughterInstrumentsPermanentDecay
Author:Samuel Johnson
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“If it were possible to transfer the methods of physical or of biological science directly to the study of man, the transfer would long ago have been made ... We have failed not for lack of hypotheses which equate man with the rest of the universe, but for lack of a hypothesis (short of animism) which provides for the peculiar divergence of man ... Let me now state my belief that the peculiar factor in man which forbids our explaining his actions upon the ordinary plane of biology is a highly specialized and unstable biological complex, and that this factor is none other than language.”

IfsMenLongHas BeensMadeStatesActionUniverseBeliefLanguageStudyOrdinaryLet MeMethodComplexesFactorsPlanesBiologyPeculiarLong AgoHypothesisExplainingTransfersUnstableDivergenceAnimismBiological Science
Author:Leonard Bloomfield
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“It is clear, from these considerations, that the three methods of classifying mankind-that according to physical characters, according to language, and according to culture-all reflect the historical development of races from different standpoints; and that the results of the three classifications are not comparable, because the historical facts do not affect the three classes of phenomena equally. A consideration of all these classes of facts is needed when we endeavour to reconstruct the early history of the races of mankind.”

DifferentCharacterFactsCultureThreeLanguageResultsRaceClassClearMankindDevelopmentNeededMethodHistoricalConsiderationStandpointEndeavourClassificationHistorical FactsClassifying
Author:Franz Boas
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