Do letters exist?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-26 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics, Writing Systems

Phonemes exist. That’s one of the key findings of 20th century linguistics.

Where do they exist? In the Noosphere I guess; but they are mental constructs which underlie not only our articulation of language, but also our mental organisation and understanding of language. So unlike a lot that is in the noosphere, they do have a psychological, measurable reality.

Letters (Graphemes) are a means of capturing phonemes in writing. They’re some arbitrariness to them, but they definitely have referents with psychological reality. So they are signs, and they have as much existence as any sign in the world—that is, as much existence as numbers or words do.

Leave a Reply

  • Subscribe to Blog via Email

  • March 2024
    M T W T F S S
    « Jul    
     123
    45678910
    11121314151617
    18192021222324
    25262728293031
%d bloggers like this: