Speech sounds cannot be understood, delimited, classified and explained except in the light of the tasks which they perform in language.

When I speak it is in order to be heard.

It is once again the vexing problem of identity within variety; without a solution to this disturbing problem there can be no system, no classification.

The search for the symbolic value of phonemes, each taken as a whole, runs the risk of giving rise to ambiguous and trivial interpretations because phonemes are complex entities, bundles of different distinctive features.

Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.

Now the identification of individual sounds by phonetic observation is an artificial way of proceeding.

A linguist deaf to the poetic functions of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistics are equally flagrant anachronisms.