It is wont to be assumed by those who oppose the antecedence of the idea to the sign, that this opinion implies the elaboration by thinkers of a store of thoughts in advance, and then the turning back and naming them by a conscious after-thought. Here is an inexcusably gross misrepresentation. There is implied, rather, that each act of nomenclature is preceded by its own act of conception […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.139

Language, both in its single items and as a whole, is primarily the sign of the idea, the sign with its accompanying idea […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.16