EN QUOI LE PARADIGME MÉTAMATHÉMATIQUE INTRODUIT PAR POINCARÉ, WHITEHEAD, ET GÖDEL PEUT-IL ÉCLAIRER LES PRIMITIVES PHONOLOGIQUES ?

Michel Freiss (1)

1 CeReS - Centre de Recherches Sémiotiques

To this very day, no consensus related to phonological primitives has really emerged. Whether they are distinctive features, phonemes, syllables, words or articulatory gestures is still a moot point, those possibilities, from one theory to another, being developed within an episteme inside a global frame of thinking deeply attached to a particular time. What seems less hypothetical is the potential of abstraction conveyed by such elements; phonology deals with the abstract dimension of speech processes, e.g. of its mapping within the brains, thus evincing a more or less close relationship with phonetics. In saussurian terms, this mapping is refered to as ''langue'' or in chomskyan terms as ''competence'', the latter being debatably acquired or innate. Nonetheless the common denominator remains a certain form of symbolic thought connected with semiotics. Still, if the metamathematical reflection introduced by H. Poincaré, Whitehead and Gödel enlightens us about mathematical abstraction, cannot it provide us with pieces of information transferable to phonological underlying structures ? In other words, is the phonological system an integrable one and hence can it accept discrete elements or on the contrary, is it a non integrable system denying any kind of discretion ? In that sense, is phonological abstraction a sheer view of the intellect ?

Mots clés: primitives phonologiques; traits distinctifs; encodage; système intégrable

Domaines: Linguistique

Michel Freiss. EN QUOI LE PARADIGME MÉTAMATHÉMATIQUE INTRODUIT PAR POINCARÉ, WHITEHEAD, ET GÖDEL PEUT-IL ÉCLAIRER LES PRIMITIVES PHONOLOGIQUES ?. 2010. ⟨hal-00952957⟩