[...] if there were no restricted inventories, linguistic theory could not hope to reach its goal, which is to make possible a simple and exhaustive description of the system behind the text.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.42

[...] linguistic theory must be of use for describing and predicting not only any possible text composed in a certain language, but, on the basis of the information that it gives about language in general, any possible text composed in any language whatsoever.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.17

Avoiding the hitherto dominant trascendent point of view and seeking an immanent understanding of language as a self-subsistent, specific structure (p. 6), and seeking a constancy within language itself, not outside it (p. 8), linguistic theory begins by circumscribing the scope of its object.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.19

By virtue of its appropriateness the work of linguistic theory is empirical, and by virtue of its arbitrariness it is calculative.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.17

It is the aim of linguistic theory to test, on what seems a particularly inviting object, the thesis that a process has an underlying system – a fluctuation an underlying constancy.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.10

Linguistic theory [...] sovereignly defines its object by an arbitrary and appropriate strategy of premisses.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.15

Linguistic theory is led by an inner necessity to recognize not merely the linguistic system, in its schema and in its usage, in its totality and in its individuality, but also man and human society behind language, and all man’s sphere of knowledge through language. At that point linguistic theory had reached its prescribed goal: ‘humanitas et universitas’.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.127

Linguistic theory, whose main task is to make explicit the specific premisses of linguistics as far back as possible, sets up for that purpose a system of definitions. [...] The aim is thus in practice to define as much as possible and to introduce premised definitions before those that premise them.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.20

Linguistics must attempt to grasp language, not as a conglomerate of non-linguistic ('e'. 'g'., physical, physiological, psycological, logical, sociological) phenomena, but as a self-sufficient totality, a structure ‘sui generis’. Only in this way can language in itself be subjected to scientific treatment [...] What is required is the construction of a linguistic theory that will discover and formulate the premisses of such a linguistics, establish its methods, and indicate its paths. The present work constitutes the prolegomena to such a theory.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.5-6

The objects of interest to linguistic theory are texts. The aim of linguistic theory is to provide a procedural method by means of which a given text can be comprehended through a self-consistent and exhaustive description. But linguistic theory must also indicate how any other text of the same premised nature can be understood in the same way, and it does this by furnishing us with tools that can be used on any such text.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.16

We choose to take our start from the premisses of previous linguistic investigation and to consider so-called '"natural" language', and this alone, as point of departure for a linguistic theory.
- Hjelmslev (1961), a pag.20