The phonemic principle

The phonemic principle Morris Swadesh‡ As basic as the phonemic principle is to linguistic science, it is only quite recently that it has had the serious attention of linguists. In studying the phonemes of Chitimacha (an Indian language of Louisiana) I knew of no single source from which I could learn to understand all the phenomena that I observed. There seemed to be a need for an adequate and complete exposition of the phonemic principle including, especially, an account of how it applies to the more marginal and difficult types of phenomena. I at first intended to include this discussion in my paper on the Chitimacha phonemes, but the wider interest of the general discussion makes it more appropriate that it be published separately. The specific treatment of Chitimacha, which can now appear without theoretical digressions, will serve to illustrate many of the points discussed here. I do not attempt to cite previous authors1 on all of the points treated in this paper, though I recognize fully my dependence on them. On a few points my treatment attempts to avoid weaknesses in previous treatments, and a point or two are perhaps introduced here for the first time. However, the chief ideals of this paper are theoretical comprehensiveness, consistency of treatment, and brevity. The phonemic principle is that there are in each language a limited number of elemental types of speech sounds, called phonemes, peculiar to that language; that all sounds produced in the employment of the given language are referable to its set of phonemes; that only its own phonemes are at all significant in the given language. The phonemes of a language are, in a sense, percepts to the native speakers of the given language who ordinarily hear speech entirely in terms of these percepts. If they hear a foreign tongue spoken, they still tend to hear in terms of their native phonemes. Bi-linguals and phonetically schooled individuals hear speech in a language native to them now in terms of the native phonemic system, now in terms of other percepts. End Page 359 If linguists occasionally have difficulty in discovering the phonemes of a language, it is usually when the language is not native to them, unless, indeed, in dealing with their own language, they be confused by some irrelevant or only partly relevant insight (as, for example, the knowledge of etymology or phonetics). At any rate, it is well to realize that one can learn nothing about the phonemes of one language by knowledge of those of another. If the phonemes are percepts to the native speakers of the language, they are not necessarily percepts that he experiences in isolation. They occur ordinarily as the elements of words or sentences. Phonemes are perceptive units in the sense that the native can recognize as different, words different as to one of the component phonemes, e.g., bid and hid or bid and bed or bid and bit. The phoneme is the smallest potential unit of difference between similar words recognizable as different to the native. Given a correct native word, the replacement of one or more phonemes by other phonemes (capable of occurring in the same position) results in a native word other than that intended, or a native-like nonsense word. Other possible or conceivable differences are either not perceived, or are perceived as distortions of proper phonemes, or are chance oral sounds that are not classed as speech sounds at all. The word sometimes has regular variant forms; in this event, two forms may differ as to one or more phonemes though they are in a sense the same word. Since variants sometimes confuse the phonemic problem, it may be well to point out some of the types of variants: I. Free variants (either variant is equally correct in any position) A. Particular (applying to a single word or a limited number of isolated words), e.g., Nootka ʔapw'inqis, ʔapw'inʔis 'in the middle of the beach' B. General (applying to all words of a given class), e.g., Chitimacha words of three or more syllables ending in -VʔV vary with -V as k'ahtiʔi, k'ahti 'he bites'. II. Conditional...