🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan27.040154.20592@midway.uchicago.edu> goer@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>What is a phoneme?  (Not a joke question; I just discovered that
>I honestly don't know, and suspect that nobody else does, either.
>Perhaps this is just sheer arrogance on my part, though, so I ask
>everyone now...).

Maybe it's not a joke, but it's certainly a bit coy.  You wouldn't ask if you
didn't already know what answers you were going to get.

Let's cut to the chase:  Sure, the phoneme isn't the end-all be-all of 
linguistics.  This doesn't mean we don't know what one _is_.  I offer the 
following evidence that I know what a phoneme is:  Give me a reasonable amount
of data about any language, and I'll give you back at least one phoneme of
that language.  Obviously, this isn't a spectacular claim about the 
descriptive power of the concept, but it does show that I know some definition,
even if it's only a procedural definition (how to find one).

Just what's your point?

Bob
r-knippen@uchicago.edu