🚀 go-pugleaf

rmk4@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.

Honestly, I didn't know what answers I'd get.  Every now and then it's fun
to ask a question that will separate true students of linguistics from the
gabby pack.  This time I have some real concerns that, despite supposed ad-
vances in phonology, nobody knows what a phoneme is, despite its widespread
use (in various forms) in the literature.  I'm just fed up with my own shabby
attempts at defining the bloody thing, and thought I'd use my frustrations
to spice up sci.lang.

>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).

What's your procedural definition, in brief.

Note:  I'm being coy, but I'm not fishing for any specific answer.  I really
want to know if anybody can tell me what a phoneme is, or how to find one.

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer