On the definition of phoneme categories on a distributional basis

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Abstract
Sapir was probably the first to suggest that phonemes might be grouped into categories according to their possibilities of combination with other phonemes in the speech chain2. Bloomfield goes much farther. He maintains3 that this is the only definition of phoneme categories which is structurally relevant, whereas the classification by distinctive features is irrelevant, because it is in reality a physiological description. This statement is probably too categorical. At any rate it may be maintained that the distinctive features are also found by commutation and can be defined by their mutual combinations, that they must accordingly be considered as linguistic units, and that it is only the next step, the analysis of these features, which is concerned with pure substance4. Both classifications would in that case be structurally relevant, and in a complete description of a language phonemes should be classified in both ways: (1) according to their constituent parts (their distinctive features) and (2) according to their possibilities of combination (their distribution or relations in the speech chain). But this article is only concerned with the second problem, the establishment of phoneme categories on a distributional basis1.

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