[...] a language is a semiotic into which all other semiotics may be translated – both all other languages, and all other conceivable semiotic structures. This translatability rests on the fact that languages, and they alone, are in the position to form any purport whatsoever; in a language, and only in a language, we can “work over the inexpressible until it is expressed” [36]. [n. 36 Kierkegaard]
- Hjelmslev (1961), Pag. 109

[...] language is a form and [...] outside that form, with function in it, is present a non-linguistic stuff, Saussure’s “substance” – the purport.
- Hjelmslev (1961), Pag. 77

A ‘language’ may be defined as a paradigmatic whose paradigms are manifested by all purports, and a ‘text’, correspondingly, as a syntagmatic whose chains, if expanded indefinitely, are manifested by all purports.
- Hjelmslev (1961), Pag. 109

Languages [...] cannot be described as pure sign systems. By the aim usually attributed to them they are first and foremost sign systems; but by their internal structure they are first and foremost [...] systems of figuræ that can be used to construct signs.
- Hjelmslev (1961), Pag. 47

When it is a question of language (in the ordinary sense of the word), which indeed alone interests us for the present, we can also use simpler designations: the process can here be called a ‘text’, and the system a ‘language’.
- Hjelmslev (1961), Pag. 39