A small note on phonology and semiotics, à propos the influence of Roman Jakobson in Luis Prieto ’s Fonología del español moderno
A small note on phonology and semiotics, à propos the influence of Roman Jakobson in Luis Prieto ’s Fonología del español moderno

Summary/Abstract: The commutation test, as it was introduced by André Martinet , can be seen as a tool for grasping what remains constant in the variability that manifests the units of form in which the expression plane of a langue is organized. It was accepted, after Saussure , and Hjelmslev , that a langue is not a substance, but a form; the form that a langue is entails that over and above the many different realizations of linguistic units there are constants, and what remains constant among the many variable realizations is necessary to recognize linguistic units as such. Furthermore, the virtual non-variability of form, as a constant, is precisely what enables the variability of substance. Conceived from this point of view, phonology does not study sounds in themselves, but sounds inasmuch as they are phenomena, i.e. sounds inasmuch as they are objects, in the sense Deely , and the scholastics before him, used such term (cf. Deely 2009).

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