School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, 12a Priory Road, Bristol, BS8 1TU, UK.
Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland, 1401 Marie Mount Hall, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2018 Apr;25(2):560-585. doi: 10.3758/s13423-017-1362-0.
Phonemes play a central role in traditional theories as units of speech perception and access codes to lexical representations. Phonemes have two essential properties: they are 'segment-sized' (the size of a consonant or vowel) and abstract (a single phoneme may be have different acoustic realisations). Nevertheless, there is a long history of challenging the phoneme hypothesis, with some theorists arguing for differently sized phonological units (e.g. features or syllables) and others rejecting abstract codes in favour of representations that encode detailed acoustic properties of the stimulus. The phoneme hypothesis is the minority view today. We defend the phoneme hypothesis in two complementary ways. First, we show that rejection of phonemes is based on a flawed interpretation of empirical findings. For example, it is commonly argued that the failure to find acoustic invariances for phonemes rules out phonemes. However, the lack of invariance is only a problem on the assumption that speech perception is a bottom-up process. If learned sublexical codes are modified by top-down constraints (which they are), then this argument loses all force. Second, we provide strong positive evidence for phonemes on the basis of linguistic data. Almost all findings that are taken (incorrectly) as evidence against phonemes are based on psycholinguistic studies of single words. However, phonemes were first introduced in linguistics, and the best evidence for phonemes comes from linguistic analyses of complex word forms and sentences. In short, the rejection of phonemes is based on a false analysis and a too-narrow consideration of the relevant data.
音位在传统理论中起着核心作用，是言语感知的单位和词汇表示的访问代码。音位具有两个基本属性：它们是“分段大小”（辅音或元音的大小）和抽象的（一个单独的音位可能有不同的声学实现）。然而，长期以来，人们一直对音位假设提出质疑，一些理论家主张使用不同大小的音系单位（如特征或音节），而另一些理论家则反对抽象代码，赞成编码刺激的详细声学特性的表示。音位假设是当今的少数观点。我们以两种互补的方式为音位假设辩护。首先，我们表明，拒绝音位是基于对经验发现的错误解释。例如，人们普遍认为，由于未能找到音位的声学不变性，因此排除了音位。然而，不变性的缺乏只是在假设言语感知是一个自下而上的过程的情况下才是一个问题。如果习得的次音节代码受到自上而下的约束的修改（事实确实如此），那么这个论点就失去了所有的力量。其次，我们根据语言数据为音位提供了强有力的正面证据。几乎所有被错误地作为反对音位的证据的发现都是基于对单个单词的心理语言学研究。然而，音位首先是在语言学中引入的，而音位的最佳证据来自对复杂词形和句子的语言学分析。简而言之，对音位的拒绝是基于错误的分析和对相关数据的过于狭隘的考虑。
