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.

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

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

At first acoustics attributed to the different sounds only a limited number of characteristic features.

A new era in the physiological investigation of linguistic sounds was opened up by X-ray photography.

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

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.