In what sense is a phoneme like a Platonic form?

[zaba]

They seem to have something in common...

[MalFet]

I would call them opposites, if anything.

	(Universal)	(Mental Entities)
Platonic forms	+	-
Phonemes	-	+

[zaba]

Right. Makes sense. Let me rephrase: In what way are distinctive features like Platonic forms?

                     (Universal)   (Mental Entities)
Platonic forms           +                    -
DFs                           +                       -
Phonemes                 -                        +

[MalFet]

I don't know of any models of phonology that treat features as either universal or non-mental. The gestural phonetics people hint in this direction, but they usually make a point of avoiding the word "feature" for exactly this reason.

[zaba]

But features are definable as units of sound that can be described in terms of physical features (e.g. [labial][voice]) no?

[MalFet]

The question gets a bit technical within generative theory. In precise terms, a feature is minimal basis of contrast. It is an abstract unit, and it does not describe something universal across languages. There's a lot of empirical work done to demonstrate, for example, that German's [voice] is not the same as English's [voice].

The issue is complicated by the fact features are typically correlated to acoustic properties of sound. This is not a coincidence, of course, but nor does it imply that features somehow are sound. When you start looking at phonetic data, it becomes clear that you really do need another level of abstraction to account for language, and that abstraction is generally understood to be mental. To quote a familiar example, throw the words "writer" and "rider" at your average English speakers and they'll swear up and down that the basis of difference is contained in the intermediate consonant. Acoustically, however, the difference is actually present in the preceding vowel.

Edit: "it does describe" -> "it does not describe". Derp. That "not" is important.

[jkpate]

If you are interested in really getting into a detailed look at this, I recommend looking through Kathleen Currie Hall's dissertation that examines a range of perspectives and lines of evidence for what phonemes and features might be. The short answer is that this is actually all very complicated, and people tend to mean different things by these categories depending on their purposes and theoretical outlook, and, as MalFet said, you can't simply draw a correspondence between features and sound or phonemes and sound.

[zaba]

a feature is minimal basis of contrast. It is an abstract unit, and it does not describe something universal across language

But is it not true that phonetics constrains phonology through the phonetic definitions associated with distinctive features? Clements thought so anyway. What am I misunderstanding?? 

[MalFet]

a feature is minimal basis of contrast. It is an abstract unit, and it does not describe something universal across language

But is it not true that phonetics constrains phonology through the phonetic definitions associated with distinctive features? Clements thought so anyway. What am I misunderstanding?? 

The key word here is associated, and I'd avoid using the word "constrain" since that has a very particular meaning in generative theory. Phonological categories must, of course, be derivable from a phonetic signal, and conversely a speaker must know how to effect phonological categories via a phonetic signal, but it is not possible to reduce one to the other.

What you're wrestling with here is nothing less than the dyadic nature of the linguistic sign, and it's no overstatement to say that modern linguistics itself began when Saussure introduced this idea to Europe.

[zaba]

Sentences like the one you made below are as close as I get to feeling like I make any progress on this issue:

What you're wrestling with here is nothing less than the dyadic nature of the linguistic sign, and it's no overstatement to say that modern linguistics itself began when Saussure introduced this idea to Europe.

You have no idea how grateful I'd be if you could elaborate on this issue with a sentence or two.
tHANKS

[MalFet]

I'm happy to elaborate however I can, but Saussure's account of the sign is only a few pages long and any attempt by me to rehash it would only serve to butcher. Check out page 65-70 of the Cours and if there's anything that's not clear please let me know what I can do to help.

https://archive.org/stream/courseingenerall00saus#page/64/mode/2up

[zaba]

Thanks for the link to the original source. Nice to read it directly and not from an intermediary.

OK, so a (0) sign is made up of (1) signified  and (2) signifier.

0. The "sign" is a unit with two sides:
1. signified is the thing in the world which is referred to by an utterance
2. signifier is the meaningful (linguistic) sequence that points to (1).

As such, (2) is made up of two layers on its own (and here begins my interpretation):

2a. phonetic layer (parole)
2b. phonemic layer (langue, sort of), which is composed of phonemes, which are, in turn, decomposable into distinctive features. In fact, the inventory of sounds in the phonemic layer are affected by distinctive features, in some way.

Before going further, is this reasonable?

[MalFet]

Thanks for the link to the original source. Nice to read it directly and not from an intermediary.

OK, so a (0) sign is made up of (1) signified  and (2) signifier.

0. The "sign" is a unit with two sides:
1. signified is the thing in the world which is referred to by an utterance
2. signifier is the meaningful (linguistic) sequence that points to (1).

As such, (2) is made up of two layers on its own (and here begins my interpretation):

2a. phonetic layer (parole)
2b. phonemic layer (langue, sort of), which is composed of phonemes, which are, in turn, decomposable into distinctive features. In fact, the inventory of sounds in the phonemic layer are affected by distinctive features, in some way.

Before going further, is this reasonable?

Yes, until this last sentence. There is no inventory of sounds in the phonemic layer. The phonemic layer is composed entirely of mental categories. Sounds are the other side of the "coin", and categories and sounds associate to produce "signs", but there is a firewall of sorts between them.

What Saussure is accomplishing here is very significant in the history of thought. He is arguing that material things ("sounds") and ideational things ("categories") can travel together without being somehow of the same sort. He's demonstrating that language can be understood as formal system.

[zaba]

Coming to this understanding means a lot to me. Thanks.

[zaba]

Let me just try once more, since this is crucial to understanding whatever it is linguistics is.

Yes, until this last sentence. There is no inventory of sounds in the phonemic layer. The phonemic layer is composed entirely of mental categories. Sounds are the other side of the "coin", and categories and sounds associate to produce "signs", but there is a firewall of sorts between them.

What Saussure is accomplishing here is very significant in the history of thought. He is arguing that material things ("sounds") and ideational things ("categories") can travel together without being somehow of the same sort. He's demonstrating that language can be understood as formal system.

FROM A SEMANTIC PERSPECTIVE:
0. The "sign" is a unit with two sides:
1. signified is the material thing in the world that (2) points to
2. signifier is the ideational thing: the language used to point to (1)

FROM  A SPEECH SOUND PERSPECTIVE:
2a. The signifier itself is a kind of "sign" with two sides of its own:
2b. signified is the material thing: phonetic sequence [sound]
2c. signifier is the ideational thing: phonemes & distinctive features [category]

Sorry if I am pushing it, but I just want to make sure I'm not "mixing levels" of description here. What do you think of this understanding?