LE PHONÈME, UNITÉ D'EMPLOI OU UNITÉ DE DESCRIPTION ? 0

« The phonemic type of structure », écrit D. Fry dans sa contribution au volume offert à Daniel Jones pour son 80 e anniversaire, « appears to be one of the brute facts about speech and language which cannot be conjured away by any amount of theorizing.» D'ailleurs, ajoute cet auteur, «the existence and the widespread use of alphabetic writing are an indication that a phonemic system and segmentation into phonemic units are features which find a ready response in speakers and listeners » (2) .

Cette opinion est jugée indéfendable par H. Mol, qui écrit : « The current, but untenable, extrapolation in linguistics is to explain the aural identification of words as a running analysis into a familiar sequence of phonemes, thereby putting hearing into the same class as alphabetic reading. The next slippery step is to regard pronunciation as the production of a running series of phonemes (...). Alphabetic writing is based on a conscious interpretation of the differences one thinks one hears between sound waves that are experienced as different words (...). Interviews with illiterates show that language users belonging to that category identify words in a sub-