Communication [...] is successfully effected only when the hearer's auditory perceptions are translated into the appropriate and intended flow of imagery or thought or both combined.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.18

Such a sentence as 'The mayor of New York is going to deliver a speech of welcome in French' is readily felt as a unified statement [...] The contributory ideas of 'of New York', 'of welcome', and 'in French' may be eliminated without hurting the idiomatic flow of the sentence.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.36

In watching my Nootka interpreter write his language, I often had the curious feeling that he was transcribing an ideal flow of phonetic elements which he heard [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.56

[...] syntactic relations may be expressed in [...] the verb (active and passive; active and static; [...] and many other special limitations on the starting-point and end-point of the flow of activity).
- Sapir (1921), a pag.109

[...] in more primitive levels, where the secondarily unifying power of the 'national' ideal does not arise to disturb the flow of what we might call natural distributions, is it easy to show that language and culture are not intrinsically associated.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.213

Assonance, later rhyme, could not but prove a welcome [...] means of articulating or sectioning the somewhat spineless flow of sonorous syllables.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.230

The auditory symbolism may be replaced [...] by a motor or by a visual symbolism (many people can read [...] in a purely visual sense, that is, without the intermediating link of an inner flow of the auditory images that correspond to the printed or written words) [...]
- Sapir (1921), a pag.16