BREV TIL: Eli Fischer-Jørgensen FRA: Charles Ernest Bazell (1953-01-26)

Istanbul 26/1/53

Dear Miss Discher-Jorgensen, Many thanks for the reply. This note will reach you safely after January! There must be some extraordinary misunderstanding about spild spilt (English 'spilled* 'spilt'), Y'he example was chosen precisely because there is no question of 'overlapping* under phonemic conditions. Since t cannot credit you with the absurdity of assimilating the case to that of Danish final d/t , nor believe / that you can credit me with a confusion between phonemic and morphological cond- itioning, I am quite at a loss to understand what is meant« four second paragraph seems a criticism of ffakobson rather th n of was generous enough to assume that his choice between plus and minus was not en- tirely arbitrary* Cf. also the passage in small print in his 'notes autobio- graphiques' to 'Troubetzkoy-Giantineau, p* xxvii. Ahe question of un-light/un-heavy must of course remain unanswered so long as spild-spilt analogy is unclear* I use 'commutation' for any potentially distinctive substitution* unsystematic syncretisms are trivial. 1 see no difficulty whatsoever in comparing systems on a purely formal basis, 1 agree of course that

me. I

the

but suspect you mean that this might be improfitable? a substantial basis is absolutely necessary for the establishment of phonemes in any one language* Only the subsequent comparison can be purely formal* I look forward to the offprints.

Yours sincerely