[...] we must not imagine that a highly developed system of speech symbols worked itself out before the genesis of distinct concepts and of thinking [...] We must rather imagine that thought processes set in, as a kind of psychic overflow, almost at the beginning of linguistic expression.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.17

[...] the sound of pain or [...] joy does not, as such, indicate the emotion [...] What it does is to serve as a more or less automatic overflow of the emotional energy; in a sense, it is part and parcel of the emotion itself.
- Sapir (1921), a pag.5