爱德华·吉布森

吉布森认为人类语言之美在于语言内部及跨语言之间普遍存在的概括性规律。

“我觉得人类语言之美，在于那些在语言内部和跨语言之间发生的概括性规律。（原文：What I find beautiful about human language is the some of the generalizations that happen across the human languages within and across a language.）”

吉布森认为词序在世界语言中呈现和谐模式的根本原因，是人类总是试图最小化词与词之间的依赖距离。

“我认为，词序之所以如此，其背后的故事很大程度上在于我们总是在试图最小化词与词之间的依赖关系。（原文：I think the story behind a lot of why word order looks the way it is is we're always trying to minimize dependencies between words.）”

吉布森认为句子中需要连接的词对相距越远，语言的产出和理解就越困难。

“你所连接的词对之间的距离越远，产出和理解的难度就越大。（原文：The further apart the pair of words are that you're connecting, the harder it is to do the production, the harder it is to do the comprehension.）”

吉布森认为中心嵌套这类含极长多重依赖的结构在任何语言中都百分之百无法理解，其困难是跨语言普遍存在的。

“无论你观察哪种语言……它都不会是好的。可以百分之百保证，那种结构在该语言中将是无法理解的。（原文：No matter what language you look at... it won't be good. It's guaranteed like 100% that will be uninterpretable in that language.）”

吉布森认为语言并非思考的必要条件，思维可以在没有语言的情况下独立进行。

“语言并非思考所必需。这并不意味着你不能用语言思考……但思考本身不需要它。（原文：Language isn't necessary for thinking. It doesn't mean you can't think in language... but you don't need it for thinking.）”