John Cowan wrote:

>
> Peter T. Daniels scripsit:
>
> > > As for the inherent vowel, couldn't it be considered as a "zero" vowel
> > > grapheme?
> >
> > Please define "grapheme" in a coherent, script-independent way!
>
> A grapheme of a given script is a unit which a graphemosystematically
> naive user of the script is disposed to point at and say without
> hedging "This is a basic unit of the script."
>
> I grant that this definition is only subjectively objective, but
> I believe it to be useful. It is rather analogous to the use of "word",
> unqualified, in ordinary linguistics.

Do we define "phoneme" no more generally than "a phoneme of a given
language is ..."? If we did that, how would we be able to identify the
phonemes of a previously unanalyzed language?

Note that, mutatis mutandis, such a definition of "phoneme of a given
language" wouldn't even work.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...