Particulate Speech: The Emergence of the Phoneme from Syllable Frame Structures

William Abler (1989) has postulated the “particulate principle of self-diversifying systems … which holds that when systems form structures having an infinite range of properties, such systems must be based on particles …”. According to Abler, natural systems exhibiting this principle “include chemical interaction, biological inheritance and human language”. The present focus will be on the linguistic particles singled out by Abler—the phonemes of language. According to Abler’s physics-based conception, the three systems “derive their properties by common inheritance” from “some property of material nature”. However, in the present view physics and biology differ in that the source of ultimate causes in biology is the theory of evolution by natural selection, and phonemes must be explained in terms of this theory, not in terms of the laws of physics. As to the origin of the three instances of particulation, the particles of chemical interaction, and biological inheritance—elements and nucleic acids respectively—were synthesized from pre-existing subcomponents, while phonemes may have emerged from a pre-existing syllable frame structure, according to the author’s “Frame/Content” theory of evolution of speech production, reviewed here. Two subphonemic particles of speech have also been proposed—the “distinctive feature” of structural linguistics and the “gesture” of proponents of dynamical systems theory. However, these particles do not exist in nature. In conclusion, syllable frame structures can be considered to provide a unique pre-systematic basis for both the evolution and the development of phonemic systems of languages.