Phonetic sound versus phoneme, as we saw in the previous article. In Part 1 of Onin-ron (1940), Arisaka Hideyo takes up Saussure’s famous analogy and confronts head-on what a phoneme is.
Saussure’s analogy
Saussure held that the sounds of a language (phonemes) are not “sounds” in themselves but something like a “value,” which exists only through differences from other sounds, and he compared this to the value of a currency. What determines a currency’s value is not the metal it’s made of but its relations to other currency and to goods. For Saussure, the sounds of a language are the same.
Arisaka agrees with part of this view. That phonemes form a system through differences from other phonemes, Arisaka grants too. But he clearly opposes the equation at the center of the analogy: phoneme = value.
“Value,” or “entity”?
Arisaka says this.
音韻が直ちに言語價値なのではない。音韻は言語價値を荷ふ所の實體である。
(A phoneme is not directly a linguistic value. A phoneme is the entity that carries linguistic value.)
Saussure treated the phoneme as value itself. Arisaka, by contrast, treats it as a “thing” that carries value. The two look alike but are entirely different. A value is an invisible quantity fixed within a web of relations. An “entity,” by contrast, is something that exists there in some form. Arisaka insists on grasping the phoneme as such an “object” that firmly exists.
The analogy of “the currency itself”
So what analogy does Arisaka propose?
Saussure は音韻を貨幣價値に譬へたのであるが、私は、音韻は寧ろ貨幣そのものに譬へらるべきであると思ふ。
(Saussure compared the phoneme to the value of a currency, but I think the phoneme should rather be compared to the currency itself.)
Here Arisaka immediately adds a note to prevent misunderstanding. By “the currency itself” he doesn’t mean the individual worn, grimy coins in one’s pocket. He means the “entity” of a currency, specified by the government and publicly recognized by society — the “standard” of that coin, fixed by law as something that should have a certain composition, weight, size, shape, and design.
The content of this standard has no intrinsic meaning. Arisaka argues, with the one-écu silver coin (an old French currency) as his example: that a silver coin worth only half its face value if melted down nonetheless passes as five francs is entirely owing to a social convention. Because it’s a convention, a single government decree can change it any way. But once fixed, an individual cannot freely change it.
A worn coin still passes
Arisaka applies this analogy to the Japanese phoneme 《b》 (the consonant of the ba row).
現実の音声は、その形はよしどれ程不完全であらうとも、それが音韻《b》を意図して発せられたものであることが認められる限りは、音韻《b》として通用し得る。
(An actual sound, however imperfect its form, can pass as the phoneme 《b》 so long as it is recognized as having been uttered with the phoneme 《b》 in mind.)
This is the heart of the passage. Each sound actually uttered differs a little from the others. Sometimes it isn’t pronounced clearly, and it blurs or turns vague. Even so, so long as the listener recognizes that “this person was trying to say a 《b》,” it passes as 《b》. Arisaka says it is exactly the same mechanism as a worn coin still passing as that coin.
What is this claim saying?
Put in other words, Arisaka’s claim is this: a phoneme is not the physical sound that actually comes out of the mouth. It is a “standard” of sound, a convention shared between speaker and listener. Actual sounds, trying to be made to that standard, are always somewhat imperfect. They still pass because the listener knows the standard.
This applies directly to the “n” (ん) example of the previous article. The “n” of sanma and the “n” of sankaku are different as actual sounds, yet both pass as conforming to the standard called Japanese “n.” Arisaka’s analogy explains that mechanism through the familiar example of a coin.
Summary
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| Saussure’s analogy | Compares the phoneme to the “value” of a currency |
| Arisaka’s objection | A phoneme is not value itself but the “entity” that carries value |
| Arisaka’s analogy | A phoneme should be compared not to value but to “the currency itself” (a standard specified by government and publicly recognized by society) |
| Consequence | Even if an actual sound is imperfect, it passes as that phoneme if recognized as intending it (just as a worn coin still passes) |
In a nutshell — for Arisaka Hideyo, a phoneme was not an invisible quantity of “difference” but the standard of sound itself, shared between speaker and listener. As a worn coin still passes as that coin, a slurred sound passes as that phoneme so long as it is recognized as conforming to the standard.