Re: CHAT: Parallelism

Ed Heil wrote:
> (e.g. a researcher observed that a word such as "bad", carefully
> pronounced, contains three fairly pure tones characteristic of the
> segments [b] [a] [d] and 'noise' inbetween.  He tried removing the
> pure [a] tone but leaving the interstital noise there; the word was
> still completely recognizeable to listeners.  He then tried removing
> the interstital 'noise' and leaving in the pure segment parts, and the
> word became mostly unrecognizeable!
That doesn't mean that phonemes don't exist!  As you pointed out, there
are three fairly pure tones.  Those are the defining characteristics of
the word.  However, they're quite brief, especially stops, far too brief
to perceive, so humans use that noise to figure out what the sounds
are.  [b] [a] [d] do exist, but we infer the consonants that from the
"noise" surrounding the vowel.

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