Re: phonemes (was: 'noun' and 'adjective')

Quoting R A Brown <ray@...>:

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:
> >
> >
> >
> >>Also, the idea that there are phoneticians who dispute the very
> >>existence of phonemes blows my mind. :)
> >
> >
> > Our very own And Rosta is one of them, unless he's changed opinion without
> > telling me.
>
> Well, they don't exist, do they? As I understand it, they are strictly
> language-dependent abstractions. While the phoneme theory is quite
> useful in describing the way sounds are related in an individual
> language they by no means IMO tell the whole story.
Well, that's getting philosophical - what does it mean for something like a
phoneme to exist?

The specific point I recall him making was that for some languages, the phoneme
is not a useful unit of analysis. But I shan't continue trying to explain the
reasoning of someone much deeper into the subject than me from imperfect
recollections.

                                                      Andreas