Don't touch my phonemes (was: minimal pairs ex: PIE e/o Ablaut)

[David L. White]

        I hesitate (perhaps not enough) to get into this, but people DO know
what the phonemes of their language are, they just don't know what the term
means.  Practically speaking, it is fairly easy to determine that /r/ and
/l/ are not separate phonemes in Japanese, or /p/ and /ph/ in English,
merely by speaking as if they are and noting the bewildered look on
unsophisticated native faces ...
        I believe Sapir has a comment somewhere to the effect that if you
want to know whether something is a phoneme in an Indian's language, ask
him.  You just have to ask the right, i.e. indirect, question, not "Is this
a phoneme?", but "Is this a possible different word?"  I think Sapir
probably had enough experience that he should know.

                                                            DLW