Language deserves to be considered among the most important universal paradigms of today culture. In favor of this claim, I published, during the last 50 years, many books and articles. Here is a selection of 40 papers calling attention on some aspects which, despite their intrinsic interest, are absent from the most existing syntheses devoted to languages. We go across a large diversity of topics, bridging natural languages, combinatorics, computer science, brain studies, molecular genetics, chemical isoprenoid structures, human needs, infinite words, formal languages, learning processes, economics, sociology, logic, philosophy, symmetry and art; in all these fields a language structure is involved. Existential and computational entities, analytic and generative approaches, discrete and continuous structures, grammars and numbers, infinite words, symmetry phenomena and art, all are involved in proving that words and languages are everywhere in the universe and in the human and social life. There are also some studies concerning topics of general interest, such as the evolution of the idea of a mathematical proof, a typology of imprecision, Duns Scotus' work concerning the existence, the unicity and the infinity of God. Two interviews complete the book.

Written by one of the most respected figures in American linguistics, this book develops an approach to the analysis of language on a mathematical model. Harris presents a formal theory of language structure, in which syntax is characterized as an orderly system of departure from random combinings of sounds, words, and all the elements of language. He argues that the combining of words in a sentence constitutes a mathematical object, and that each departure from randomness is a contribution to the structure and meaning of a sentence. Discussing the differences in the structure and content of language, mathematics, and music, Harris shows that the use of language in a science constitutes a distinguishable sub-language. Remarkable and compelling, Harris's magnum opus will be considered the classical analysis of the structuring of information and development of language.