The task is to investigate speech sounds in relation to the meanings with which they are invested, i.e., sounds viewed as signifiers, and above all to throw light on the structure of the relation between sounds and meaning.

Roman Jakobson

Roman Jakobson

Above Between Invested Investigate Light Meaning Meanings Relation Sounds Speech Structure Task Throw Viewed Which

Related Quotes

Speech sounds cannot be understood, delimited, classified and explained except in the light of the tasks which they perform in language.

— Roman Jakobson

CannotClassifiedExcept

Instead of following one another the sounds overlap; a sound which is acoustically perceived as coming after another one can be articulated simultaneously with the latter or even in part before it.

— Roman Jakobson

AfterAnotherBefore

At first acoustics attributed to the different sounds only a limited number of characteristic features.

— Roman Jakobson

AttributedCharacteristicDifferent

A new era in the physiological investigation of linguistic sounds was opened up by X-ray photography.

— Roman Jakobson

EraInvestigationLinguistic

Semantics, or the study of meaning, remained undeveloped, while phonetics made rapid progress and even came to occupy the central place in the scientific study of language.

— Roman Jakobson

CameCentralEven