Quotations by Author

Kenneth L. Pike

If language did not affect behavior, it could have no meaning.

Language is a tool adequate to provide any degree of precision relevant to a particular situation.

Revelation and the nature of truth must be viewed in reference to the structure of language.

Tagmemic theory insists that no sentence is well described unless its external distribution is given.

The marvelous thing is that even in studying linguistics, we find that the universe as a whole is patterned, ordered, and to some degree intelligible to us.

Verbal and nonverbal activity is a unified whole, and theory and methodology should be organized or created to treat it as such.

Without a possibility of change in meanings human communication could not perform its present functions.