Phonemic Segmentation as Epiphenomenon: Evidence from the History of Alphabetic Writing*

Abstract

1. PRELIMINARY REMARKS There is by now a large and convincing body of evidence that linguistic units representing acoustic or articulatory steady states need not be included as primitives in linguistic representations of phonological structure. Alternatives to such segments l being pursued in current phonological work include both larger units that in traditional analysis might be treated as more than one segment and single features that might be part of the representation of one or more segments in a word. Similarly, investigations of language use suggest that many speakers do not divide words into phonological segments unless they have received explicit instruction in such segmentation comparable to that involved in teaching an alphabetic writing system. Nevertheless, alphabetic writing, writing whose symbols represent individual segments, exists, and is learnable. Paradoxically, then, alphabetic writing is based on a phonological unit that is arguably nota natural unit (see also Studdert-Kennedy, 1987: 68). How is this paradox to be resolved? To the extent that the paradox has been recognized, the segmental nature. of alphabetic writing has been

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