Talk:Phoneme/Archive 2

Use of study of phonemes for trying to re-construct the history of Language
Quentin D. Atkinson. “Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa,” Science, April 15, 2011. DOI:10.1126/science.1199295. This article is making a lot of ripples. 211.225.30.91 (talk) 04:51, 16 April 2011 (UTC)


 * However, it would probably be more relevant for Linguistic typology and articles on early human migrations... AnonMoos (talk) 07:29, 16 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know. I think people hearing vaguely about this would probably never think of "Linguistic typology" as a place to look for it.  As for articles on early migrations, what are they called?  Maybe just a brief reference to the work here, with a link to what-ever article the topic more closely fits into would be the best thing to do.211.225.30.91 (talk) 00:21, 17 April 2011 (UTC)


 * It's a fact that the study isn't really about the basic concept of "phoneme" itself, but instead uses phonemes as a tool to conduct a study in another subject area. As for migration articles, start with Early human migrations... AnonMoos (talk) 02:06, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

<!n!> I cannot get over the preceding banter here. I almost wanted to read it twice just to try and figure out what college, and books that others have written, that you've read and taken a test on to become so vast as you all are. This page, like any dictionary; should be the definition of the word. "feelings", should all be omitted. Define the word. State the "Possible" scale of use, or the need for it. State history. State other terms that reference this field. -- 16:22, 14 October 2011‎ 76.94.240.140

in general
I am glad to see universal agreement that this page ( phoneme ) is a disaster area. Here are a few comments on the discussion:(1) That the phoneme is an obsolete concept is POV and, while it should be acknowledged that some people have such an opinion, should not be otherwise mentioned (2) The phoneme is not part of phonology as phonology is currently understood. (3) The phoneme is a tool of language recording, orthography and communication (4) Language do not have unique phonemic systems ("there are nine and ninety ways of ... ") (5) the fundamental reason for phonemics is the minimal pair (trio, etc.) and a phoneme system is an abstraction away from a data base of minimal pairs (by that I mean such things as writing syllable-initial 't' with the same symbol as syllable-final 't') and can be done in many different ways (6) Writing was invented three times ( Sumer, China and Meso-America ) but only one of these traditions developed phonemes. Phonemes are not inevitable. But they are a very useful tool. DKleinecke (talk) 04:54, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I think you need to clarify on #2 and #4. #5 sounds wrong.  #6 is fallacious (the writing system tradition itself didn't develop phonemes).  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  06:33, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

It's still a disaster area, but no end in sight. I disagree with point one. If it's a concept that is supposed to be central to phonology, by most phonologists don't believe in it, that's an issue that goes beyond POV. I agree with the original comment, though, that the phoneme is quite likely an artefact of developing sub-syllabic writing systems. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 133.7.7.19 (talk) 11:49, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, there's a laughable notion. +Angr 15:28, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe I'm missing something, but what exactly is "laughable" about the above discussion?201.37.75.85 (talk) 18:30, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The idea that "the phoneme is quite likely an artefact of developing sub-syllabic writing systems". If there's any causal relationship between the two at all, then the phoneme is the cause and the sub-syllabic writing system is the result (since language developed millennia before writing systems). +Angr 21:26, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I still fail to see what was laughable. Not all linguists accept the existence of the phoneme as defined in this article. In fact, I'd say that probably MOST phonologists don't but into it, but still use the phoneme as a convenient working principle (even though many recent theories, both functionalist and generative, including OT, can do without the phoneme pretty well). And I understand what people claiming it is an artifact of certain writing systems are coming from. First, we have theoretical discussions of things like "letters changing their sound according to their position" since Hindu and Greek grammarians, and the modern idea of the phoneme (just like the idea of the morpheme) certainly draws a lot from those traditions. Secondly, much of the literature on phonemic awareness actually supports the 'artifact' thesis. Anyway, the phoneme is a hypothesis, not an objective and obvious fact. And if the concept is wrong, if we do not store that sort of abstract representation in our minds, then it can't be the "cause" of anything.201.37.75.85 (talk) 22:50, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Certainly why the concept of phoneme doesn't incorporate well into models of language perception ought to be discussed. This is what, in part, ought to make it obsolete in linguistics, but modern academic linguistics still has a 'structuralist' hangover, where language as a 'system' subsists in some Platonic realm somewhere. As for the idea that phonemes represent 'inter-changeable' sounds, this too is not supported by recent empirical research that did just that--cut and splice captures of 'allophones'. What native speakers perceived were incomprehensible things. At best the phoneme is a nice fiction to discuss language formalistically at a sub-lexical level, without getting bogged down in phonetic detail (without having to acknowledge that we still don't know what is actually invariant at a sub-lexical level). One of many such fictions in linguistics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 133.7.7.19 (talk) 10:47, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. But would you happen to have refs or links for that recent empirical research? I'd be interested. It would be useful for the article as well, of course.201.37.75.85 (talk) 14:02, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


 * It is of no importance for this article if some linguistic theories discard the phoneme in favour of other descriptions of language. This article should describe the phoneme as it is (was) defined and used by theories that accept it. With at most a remark that acceptance is not universal anymore. Furthermore it is still exetensively uswed in langage teaching. &minus;Woodstone (talk) 17:17, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you're wrong on a number of points. What do you mean "of no importance"? If the hypothesis is questioned, then criticism should be mentioned. If many contemporary theories ignore it, then that should be mentioned as well. And by the way, acceptance was universal. Also, its widespread usage in language teaching is recognized by just about everyone, but what does that have to do with the necessity or validity of the hypothesis?201.37.75.85 (talk) 18:07, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 * But he's right on one major point. We need sources for all of this.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  19:55, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

The article erroneously states: The reason why these different sounds are nonetheless considered to belong to the same phoneme in English is that if an English-speaker used one instead of the other, the meaning of the word would not change: saying [kʰ] in skill might sound odd, but the word would still be recognized.

Modern research on speech perception shows that it usually results in an incomprehensible item, so this idea of interchangeability is a forlorn one. But it's obvious that the culprits responsible for this totally crap article couldn't give a toss, right? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 133.7.7.240 (talk) 12:02, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, not sure where to put this as first time adding something to Wikipedia. The Korean example sounds really confusing: /tʰata/ is pronounced [tʰada], for example. That is, when they hear this one word, Korean speakers perceive the same sound in both the beginning and middle of the word, whereas an English speaker would perceive different sounds in these two locations" The bold makes it sound like a Korean speaker would perceive the aspirated t (the sound at the beginning of the word) and the unaspirated stop (the sound in the middle of the word) as the same. They would not, as aspiration is phonemic in Korean, though voicing isn't.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shychigirl (talk • contribs) 15:45, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Phonemicity
Please define the term "phonemicity", found in books. - Altenmann >t 06:29, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Doesn't it mean "status as a phoneme"? So "the phonemicity of [x]" means the fact that (question whether) [x] is a phoneme (in whatever language is being considered). Victor Yus (talk) 06:41, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
 * He-he; your question shows that my request makes sense. Answer: so far as I saw its usage, yes and no. - Altenmann >t 07:24, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

How does one pronounce phoneme?
phoe-neem? phoe-nemm? I suggest with a hint of irony that this article is in need of an IPAing by someone who knows the IPA. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.244.108.20 (talk) 17:34, 3 October 2012 (UTC)


 * According to Wikipedia IPA conventions for English, [foʊniːm]... -- AnonMoos (talk) 21:41, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Number of Phonemes
I've just checked the source that was cited for Rotokas and !Xoo (Crystal 1997), and it is readily apparent that this was not correctly cited. In fact, Crystal 1997 and 2010, as well as his source, the UPSID make no reference to !Xoo whatsover, but to !Xu (Northern Khoisan), which is listed with 141, not 121 phonemes. Also, neither source mentioned the number of tones included. I've corrected this for the first paragraph of the section, but I'm unsure as to the source of the remainder of that section, as it goes into some detail about the languages and I do not have the time to go on a fact finding mission here currently - however in the light of the above discrepancy this should be checked and eventually corrected/removed. — Fffree (talk) 14:34, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Pseudoscientific nature of the concept of phoneme
The essence of pseudoscientific phonemes can be seen in the fact that the phoneme ousted from science concept of speech sounds. Phoneme is substituted the sound of speech.

Proof that the speech sound is a scientific concept, it is from the laws of the elementary articulations and general classification as periodic table of all 30 elementary articulation of vowels and consonants of speech sounds. That were open were formulated and developed by Russian researcher Alexander Makeev to the scientific theory of biomechanics of speech sounds in the 1984-2013 period: [http://www.sciteclibrary.ru/texsts/rus/stat/st4696.pdf Makeyev A.K. Normal and pathological anatomy and physiology of the human person and society. Fundamental knowledge about the qualities of the human person, human society and the software company, produces and acts of people, based on the universal algorithm of holographic structure and function at all levels and forms of matter. / / Scientific and Technical Library. July 25, 2012. 364 p.] Alex makeyev (talk) 06:27, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Alex makeyev (talk • contribs) 07:22, 11 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Your "intuitive" system of articulation covers only the sounds of Russian - and basic idea of the "periodic table" you suggest was already developed by Sanskrit grammarians in 500BC - and a real one that works for all the languages of the world is developed by the International Phonetic Association and is basic knowledge for every college level student of phonetics. And the concept of the phoneme does not replace the science of phonetics, you don't seem to understand what the phoneme is and how it relates to speech sounds. It is generally a good idea to start by studying what is already known in the sciences that you aim at revolutionizing.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:20, 11 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Maunus|snunɐw· -- I displayed the all 30 physiologically optimal (elementary) articulation of vowels and consonants of speech is not due to a language, or race, or nation. I know very well the essence of the phoneme. Russian linguists very jealous defend place in science for the phoneme. Because that Russian linguists had formulated the basic definitions of phoneme. These definitions are confused. Different linguistic schools have to different determine the composition of phonemes. Alex makeyev (talk) 16:25, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, that makes no sense at all, since apparently most of the world's languages do not agree that these random 30 sounds are optimal or elementary. In fact you don't even have the cardinal vowel [i] which exists in the vast majority of the worlds languages. And you include as elementary sounds affricates that are clearly composed of dual articulations (i.e. ts can be analyzed as consisting of the elementary articulations t and s) It is not about jealously defending the phoneme, its that your theory makes no sense at all and is obviously based on not knowing the basics of phonetics and phonology.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 17:14, 11 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Dear Maunus, -- you do not understand the essence of biomechanics of speech. There are 6 types of articulation. Moving apart vowels. Dense shutter sonorant. Plane shutter slot muffled and slot voiced consonants. Moving apart of the tight-closing stop consonants. The sounds of speech, which are called affricates TS, DZ, TSH, J, is blasting the sounds of speech (in the international system for transcription are no characters, but this does not mean that it is a sequence of two speech sounds). Which falsely combined with a sequence of speech sounds: PF, BW, MB, NG, and so on. I work in this subject since 1984. Alex makeyev (talk) 06:50, 12 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Alex makeyev -- the phoneme is somewhat superseded by more advanced concepts in modern "generative" phonological theories, and certain semi-baroque mid-20th century elaborations of the phoneme concept ("biuniqueness" etc.) have been definitively rejected; however, the phoneme still does have a place in linguistics, and much practical work on orthographies etc. would become much more difficult without it. If you want a Russian connection, much of the early work on the phoneme was done at the University of Kazan or by Nikolai Trubetzkoy... AnonMoos (talk) 16:02, 11 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Dear AnonMoos, -- I'm just finishing writing an interdisciplinary an article for publication in the international scientific journal. Wait. Will see the publication of the article, and I'll give you the link to it. We can make sure in my rightness in different directions and areas natural sciencies, humanities and social sciences. Alex makeyev (talk) 16:32, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Alex makeyev (talk) 12:23, 12 March 2013 (UTC) Alex makeyev (talk) 07:07, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Alex makeyev (talk) 13:35, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

minimal pair in Korean
Can anyone tell me where this comes from? "In other languages, though, including Korean, even though both sounds [t] and [d] occur, no such minimal pair exists. The lack of minimal pairs distinguishing [t] and [d] in Korean provides evidence that in this language they are allophones of a single phoneme /t/. The word /tata/ is pronounced [tada], for example. That is, when they hear this word, Korean speakers perceive the same sound in both the beginning and middle of the word, whereas an English speaker would perceive different sounds in these two locations." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Def0021 (talk • contribs) 16:07, 3 September 2013 (UTC)


 * What the author may have had in mind is that many languages neutralise this contrast in intervocalic and word-final contexts (e.g. final obstruent devoicing in German, Dutch, etc.). I'm not so sure about Korean there, but from reading some work on word-initial denasalisation (/n/->[d]) in Korean (http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1324541/1/1324541.pdf), which compared the resulting phones to various underlying plosives I had the impression that /t/ and /d/ are contrastive in Korean too. Could it be the case that Korean voiced plosives intervocallically, but that /t/ and /d/ are contrastive in word-initial position? In any case, it does not seem justified to say that mere lack of having found a minimal pair is a justification for allophony, as the remainder of the paragraph argues against this. One would want this to be predictable or demonstrable, for instance through such a process as intervocalic voicing. —Fffree (talk) 03:24, 1 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Just as an addition, the article on Korean phonology states that Korean plosives make a three-way voicing distinction between lenis, tenuis and fortis. I think it really must be the case that the author thought of neutralisation due to intervocalic voicing here. A better example with true absence might come from language without a voicing distinction in plosives, such a Pirahã or any of the ones marked in WALS as not contrasting voice in plosives and fricatives.(http://wals.info/feature/4A#2/28.6/152.5) —Fffree (talk) 03:42, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposed redefinition of phoneme
Sorry, in spite of the claim that yours is much easier to understand, it just won't do. Gimson chose his words with great care. Your term 'unit of speech' is vague, and does not reflect the importance of contrastivity. Hence a sneeze or a hiccup could count as a unit of speech in your definition. It is not enough to say that something makes one word different from another word. You can produce that result by whispering, or speaking more slowly. The notion of change of meaning is absolutely critical, and your definition misses that. RoachPeter (talk) 19:37, 11 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Who are you talking to? -- AnonMoos (talk) 03:36, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Someone called Zeddocument who changed the definition of the phoneme on June 11th. I reverted the change, for the reasons given. RoachPeter (talk) 08:43, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Importance scale
I started a discussion relating to this article's rating on the importance scale at. — Eru·tuon 18:42, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Background and related ideas
Someone called Bertivit has just added a second reference to an article or book apparently written in Swahili to this section, in addition to a reference to the same work in 'Other features with phonemic status'. I can't see how this reference could possibly be any use to non-Swahili-speaking users of WP. Could Bertivit write a note justifying the addition of this ref (Matlakhow Witawt, Maisha Ali. Msamiati. Kufa na kupona. (in Kiswahili's lang.) Dodoma, 2008)? Otherwise I think it should be removed. RoachPeter (talk) 11:05, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Opening paragraph
Am I alone in finding the opening definition "A phoneme /ˈfoʊniːm/ is all the phones that share the same signifier for a particular language's phonology" completely unsatisfactory? The introduction to an article should define the topic in a clear way, not using confusing terms like "phone" which are even less well known that the word "phoneme" itself. If you are explaining something for beginners, you need to explain the unknown in terms of the known, not in terms of the even more unknown. Technical terms such as "phone" and "signifier" (terms which, I confess, despite having a degree in linguistics, I have never heard of) should be left for later in the article. Kanjuzi (talk) 03:01, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Neutralized nasal in English
The article claims under the "Archiphonemes and neutralization" section that English nasals are neutralized before consonants. But examples like downplay, hanged, dreamt, concrete and a multitude of compound words contradict this.2602:306:3642:CB90:249D:6D5C:73B0:5076 (talk) 15:01, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
 * There's a morpheme boundary in each case: down|play, hang|ed, dream|t. Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:00, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

No archiphonemic analysis
For example a lot of time is wasted here saying untrue things. For example, in German /x/ is actually in complementary distribution with /h/, so not really rare for final /h/ at least europe-wise. Also, the article admits this archiphonology in the case of the lack of Caucasian /k/. Furthermore, in the case of Hupa, there is a /q/ sound alone, but there is little difference between uvulars and velars. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.57.144.205 (talk) 07:32, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Different ways of analysing a language phonemically
The article at present doesn't seem to make it clear that not everyone agrees on how many phonemes any particular language has. One linguist might analyse the diphthong [oj] as one phoneme, another as two, for example. It should also mention marginal phonemes, which occur only in one or two words, such as the nasal vowel in "restaurant" in some people's pronunciation. Kanjuzi (talk) 09:54, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The idea of a marginal phoneme is briefly touched upon at Segment (linguistics), but I agree it's worth covering here too. Nardog (talk) 12:59, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
 * It's a bit surprising that this issue doesn't figure more prominently in the article. In the development of phoneme theory in the mid-20th century there was a great deal of debate about the possibility of alternative phonemic analyses of the phonology of a language, the debate being sometimes labelled "God's truth vs. hocus-pocus". Many of the papers are reprinted in M. Joos 'Readings in Linguistics'. This may be mainly of historical importance nowadays, but it is a issue that hasn't gone away. Maybe it is covered in another WP article? RoachPeter (talk) 15:35, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
 * That's certainly interesting. I think it should be added to the article, if anyone has access to a library and can find the book. Kanjuzi (talk) 15:42, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I know languages that tripled their numbers of phonemes from the 1950s to the early 2000s - not because of language change but because of changes in phonological theory away from seeking the most parsimonious inventory to seeking an inventory that gives the best fit with phonetic reality and phonological processes.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:05, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Peer Review
Hello, -This section is a good addition to the article -I think images would be a nice addition -Good use of citation in second paragraph -First paragraph needs support with citation -perhaps elaborate more on articulation bundles -the neutral nature of the article could possibly benefit from orientating the section to be more objective as opposed to comparing to spoken language — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jpeliz (talk • contribs) 03:58, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Merge with Chereme
I'm not sure there's much use in having a separate article for a historical term that has been entirely subsumed by this one, especially considering how little information is in that article that isn't already in this one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:0:1004:4:E80B:CF39:B356:4833 (talk) 17:45, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Totally agree. A redirect pages could be created for these words. If someone else endorses, I will merge them. Peacedance (talk) 21:50, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Endorsed. The term is largely historical/political. All the peer-reviewed sign language linguistics I've read has used "phonology" since well before the turn of the millennium. --Terpatron9000 (talk) 13:00, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree as well, so I went ahead and did it. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 08:50, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Cleaup/rewrite
Article needs a rewrite. Phonology as most people use the term is cognitive, the article barely mentions the cognitive aspect. Because of deep cognitive assignment, native phonologies come easily, whereas foreign phonologies are difficult. -Inowen (nlfte) 07:23, 3 February 2019 (UTC)


 * The phoneme concept dates basically to the 1930s (with many partial precursors), and is associated with structural linguistics. Cognitive linguistics didn't start to develop as a distinct academic sub-field until maybe around 1970.  So the classical structuralist phoneme pre-dates generative phonology and cognitive linguistics. AnonMoos (talk) 17:15, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Distinguishing phonemes from morphophonemes
The article currently says that the phoneme of belongs to can be recovered from morphological evidence. However, this seems to conflate pure phonemes, as in the distinctive units of speech, with morphophonemes, which talks about underlying representations of morphemes independent of environment. In a purely phonemic representation, the same phone in the same environment cannot represent more than one phoneme. The section in which the dubious passage stands talks about the loss of distinction between phonemes, and their representation as archiphonemes. It is by this definition that the phoneme cannot be recovered from the word. A listener cannot recover the phoneme from purely phonological information, the phone is inherently ambiguous, which is why an achiphonemic representation is needed. The process of recovering the vs  distinction belongs to morphophonology, since it involves the comparison of the same morpheme occurring in different environments. But on a purely phonemic basis this information is not available; the phone cannot be assigned either phoneme and thus the actual morpheme to which it belongs isn't recoverable from phones alone. Instead, the speaker has to analyse the sentence, guess which of the two homophones is the one that was intended, and then recover the morpheme based on that guess. All of this falls under the domain of morphophonology. Thus, the sentence is wrong in stating that the phoneme can be recovered through a morphological analysis. The phoneme cannot be recovered, since it is purely phonological. The morphophoneme is what gets recovered, but only if the speaker is able to guess the morpheme from context. Rua (mew) 23:42, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't get what you're trying to say here, but the section in question is talking about contextual neutralization of phonemes for which a number of proposals other than archephonemes have been provided and which do not rely on bi-uniqueness or the isolation of phonology from other domains of grammar (see, for example, the dispursion theoretic account of context neutralization in Fleming 2017). Let's say we have a toy grammar with "bed", "bet", the suffix "-ing" and an intervocalic flapping rule. The phonological input would have  as its phonetic output. The input  would also have  as its phonetic output. If we didn't have access to the phonological inputs but have these two strings, how do we determine what the underlying representation should be? We look at what the root is for both strings, in one case the root is, in the other it is . Because we know there is an intervocalic flapping rule ->/V_V which neutralizes the t/d contrast in "bet" and "bed", we can conclude that  is an allophone of both /t/ and /d/ based on morphophonological evidence. Biuniqueness as a requirement for phoneme specification was abandoned with the generativist turn in the 70s and 80s, and this example is one of the reasons it was abandoned. See for example, Brittanica's entry on Phonology: "A second important principle of the post-Bloomfieldian approach was its insistence that phonemic analysis should be carried out prior to and independently of grammatical analysis. Neither this principle nor that of bi-uniqueness was at all widely accepted outside the post-Bloomfieldian school, and they have been abandoned by the generative phonologists." The article you link to, Morphophonology, even points this out: "Until the 1950s [...] phonological analysis was split into two parts: a morphophonological part, where neutralizing rules were developed to derive phonemes from morphophonemes; and a purely phonological part, where phones were derived from the phonemes. Since the 1960s (in particular with the work of the generative school, such as Chomsky and Halle's The Sound Pattern of English) many linguists have moved away from making such a split, instead regarding the surface phones as being derived from the underlying morphophonemes (which may be referred to using various terminology) through a single system of (morpho)phonological rules." Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 01:19, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
 * It's perhaps true that some linguists take a different approach to it now, but it's not the traditional approach and per WP:DUE, minor views should be represented as such. If the modern approach really disavows morphophonology entirely and considers it part of phonology, then both articles should give sourced statements saying that. But as of right now, the morphophonology article contradicts the phonology article because of that one dubious statement. The underlying representation cannot both be phonological and morphophonological, unless there are still different schools of thought on the matter and then WP:DUE applies. And so, the statement remains dubious because it does not agree with my own understanding of the subject and there is no sourced indication that this is the modern approach to phonology except for that one statement, which could easily be a minority view. Rua (mew) 10:49, 4 May 2019 (UTC)


 * First off, I'm by no means convinced that "bedding" and "betting" are absolute homonyms in all American English dialects with "flapping" (in at least some dialects in some circumstances, there seems to be a surviving phonation distinction), so the example is maybe not that great in the first place.
 * Rua -- what you're talking about is known as "biuniqueness" (the supposed recoverability of phonemes from phonetic forms without the need for any non-phonetic information), but the tendency of the last 60 years in linguistics has been against upholding phonemic "biuniqueness" (as discussed briefly in the article). The phoneme concept still has a place in introductory linguistics, and in practical considerations of providing writing systems for unwritten languages (or providing reformed writing systems for languages with inadequate orthographies), but as far as I know, very few linguists nowadays consider biuniqueness in the 1950s structuralist sense to be an overriding basic principle.  Morphophonemics still survives in modern theory, in a way, with respect to morphemes which have phonologically unpredictable alternants (i.e. knife has the plural knives with anomalous [v], while fife has the plural fifes with predictable [f]), but phonologically predictable morpheme alternants are another matter... AnonMoos (talk) 11:58, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
 * What I understand from this article is that archiphonemes are an addition to biuniqueness, that account for the fact that phones can sometimes result from multiple phonemes through neutralisation. In this sense, "pure" biuniqueness is indeed untenable, but biuniqueness + archiphonemes still makes sense. However, there is still the matter of whether the flap can be assigned a phoneme, as the dubious sentence originally claimed, or whether it is an archiphoneme that is inherently ambiguous about the nature of the phoneme. It cannot be claimed that it's both, so if different schools of thought analyse the situation differently, we need to state who thinks what, rather than assigning one of them absolute truth as was done before. Rua (mew) 12:15, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Example in lead
An edit of me to simplify a part of the lead was reverted by User:Barefoot through the chollas to:


 * If, in another language, the two sequences differing only by pronunciation of the final nasal consonant are interpreted as being the same word, phonetic [n] (as in English sin) and [ŋ] (as in English sing) are pronunciations of a single phoneme in that language.

In my view this sentence is unnecessarily convoluted and detailed for use in the lead. It talks about another language, but then interjects references to English about two sounds that have already been explained just before. Mentioning the "nasal consonant" adds jargon that does not add understanding. Therefore a more concise formulation could be:
 * If, in another language, two sequences differing only by pronunciation of the final sounds [n] or [ŋ] are perceived as being the same, then these two sounds are interpreted as variants of a single phoneme.

&minus;Woodstone (talk) 14:19, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
 * User:Woodstone, thanks for the effort at further cleanup, always welcome. There's a reason for everything I wrote, otherwise I wouldn't have written it. But to paraphrase Satchmo, "If you have to ask...", and nothing's crucial here, anyway. I'll propose this version just to up the accuracy quotient to a slightly more comfortable level:
 * If, in another language, two sequences differing only by pronunciation of the final sounds [n] or [ŋ] are perceived as being the same in meaning, then these two sounds are interpreted as variants of a single phoneme in that language.
 * Cheers. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 19:07, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
 * That sounds much better: still complete and less clutter. You might want to add "any" before "two sequences".&minus;Woodstone (talk) 20:13, 2 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Hm. I am compelled to conclude that the final nasals in the English sequences and  “are interpreted as variants of a single phoneme” because the sequences “differ[ing] only by pronunciation of the final sounds  or ” and “are perceived as being the same in meaning”. I further conclude that although English  and  are most of the time phonemically separate they are sometimes variants of a single phoneme. — The definition lacks a modifier such as “regularly”, “always”, “in all cases” or “without exception”: Once a phoneme, always a phoneme. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 20:32, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
 * User:LiliCharlie, are you hinting that there just may be a use for "clutter" (a.k.a. precision, accuracy, clarity) after all? (Later perhaps someone will explain once a phoneme always a phoneme to beati hispani quibus vivere est bibere.) Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 22:06, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
 * The remark by User:LiliCharlie corresponds to my request for addition of "any", giving:
 * If, in another language, any two sequences differing only by pronunciation of the final nasal consonant are interpreted as being the same word, phonetic [n] (as in English sin) and [ŋ] (as in English sing) are pronunciations of a single phoneme in that language.
 * &minus;Woodstone (talk) 11:30, 3 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Right. Your proposal is more elegant though. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 17:54, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry, something went wrong in my last version (copy paste error). I meant:
 * If, in another language, any two sequences differing only by pronunciation of the final sounds [n] or [ŋ] are perceived as being the same in meaning, then these two sounds are interpreted as variants of a single phoneme in that language.
 * &minus;Woodstone (talk) 13:40, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Nasal neutralization before stops
Hi all. The article states that in English, m can only appear before the stops p and b. But what about the word empty? It's spelled with a p, but the p is usually silent JonathanHopeThisIsUnique (talk) 13:52, 17 January 2020 (UTC)


 * I think this must refer to the section on Neutralization and archiphonemes. It's important to remember that the rule is restricted by "provided there is no morpheme boundary between them", which means that, for example "primetime" is ok with the medial sequence /mt/. It's certainly true that 'empty' could be pronounced /emti/, but it's an unusual pronunciation. A more common pronunciation (in most British English accents and also, I think, American) is for the /p/ to be realized as a glottal stop between the /m/ and the /t/, with no release noise to mark the transition from /p/ to /t/, hence [emʔti]. Phonetically, the /p/ is just a brief silence. That doesn't answer the question, however. If someone does say /emti/ then the assimilation rule would seem to be broken. The usual get-out would be to say that the underlying /p/ has been elided (or "deleted"), but is still present at the phonological level; thus the word 'empty' is composed of the phonemes /empti/ but is phonetically [emti]. You may or may not buy this suggestion. Perhaps the text in the article should have the word 'usually' added. RoachPeter (talk) 15:15, 17 January 2020 (UTC)