In general, the philological movement opened up countless sources relevant to linguistic issues, treating them in quite a different spirit from traditional grammar; for instance, the study of inscriptions and their language. But not yet in the spirit of linguistics.

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Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law.

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Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a shapeless and indistinct mass.

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Within speech, words are subject to a kind of relation that is independent of the first and based on their linkage: these are syntagmatic relations, of which I have spoken.

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Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other.

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Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.

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The business, task or object of the scientific study of languages will if possible be 1) to trace the history of all known languages. Naturally this is possible only to a very limited extent and for very few languages.

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Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another.

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It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and how language lives, carries on and changes over time.

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Henceforth, language studies were no longer directed merely towards correcting grammar.

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