On Defining the Phoneme

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2865387
AutoresW Freeman Twaddell
Ano1935
Volume11
Fascículo1
Páginas5
Data de publicação1935-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoLanguage (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0097-8507 • E-ISSN: 1535-0665
EditoraJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/522070
OpenAlexW2143549750
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas49

For many years, now, and particularly within the last decade, there has been increasing use of the term ‘phoneme’, ‘wenn man sich auch nicht immer über seine definition einig ist’. Parallel to this increased use of the term, there has been the re-emergence of a concept of some unit of spoken language, a unit which is not the same as a ‘sound of speech’. It has long been known to phoneticians and linguists in general that the sounds of speech, even within the narrowest restrictions of time and place, even within the usage of a single individual, present an almost infinite variety. Scarcely any two speakers of a given dialect pronounce the same word exactly alike, either as to their articulatory movements or as to the sound-waves which those movements set up in the atmosphere. And yet, within the communicative and expressive medium, those (articulatorily and acoustically) slightly different processes are still the same word; and the ‘sounds’ which comprise this same word are in some way the same sounds, within the frame of that communicative and expressive medium which is the language of the community. It is the recognition of this sameness, this effective unity, which has found expression in the term ‘phoneme’ as a unit of spoken language

Linguistics · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology