¹ Teiping phonology', JAOS 67.253–67 (1947) and Teiping morphophonemics', Lg. 26.63–85 (1950). Both papers are reprinted in M. Joos, ed., Readings in linguistics (Washington, 1957; hereafter referred to as RIL), 217–28 and 315–28 respectively. References in this note will be made to RIL pagination.

² The term is used here as a loose label for the dominant trends in American descriptive linguistics in the 1940s and 1950s, hence to designate a true historical construct, and not as an (apparently uncomplimentary) epithet, as in some recent writing.

³ Hockett rather coyly employs the phrase ‘symbols for inclosure between solidi’ instead of the word ‘phoneme’ (RIL 221). We agree entirely with his point, that linear representation on the phonemic level is a matter of typographical convenience and not linguistic truth, and use such representation here as he does, as a shorthand for a list of features. Incidentally, this early argument of Hockett's seems to have been entirely overlooked as a precedent in the many papers of the last few years which have argued the irreality of ‘taxonomic phonemes’ vs. feature matrices, phonemic and phonetic.

⁴ The term ‘final’ is traditionally employed in Chinese grammar for that portion of a monosyllable following an initial consonant or zero. A table of Mandarin finals is given in RIL 221.

⁵ Samuel E. Martin, ‘Problems of hierarchy and indeterminacy in Mandarin phonology’, Bulletin of the Institute of history and philology, Academia Sinica 29.209–29 (1957), does recognize the distinction, and accounts for it by cutting the Gordian knot and setting up two phonemes. But this sort of solution simply skirts the problem of predictability between these two putative phonemes. Ordered rules show this neatly, and at the same time render unnecessary the artificial alternative suggested by Martin of assuming a latent n (as Hockett might assume a latent i) wherever the centralized A occurs. Use of dynamic rules also allows a solution which is superior to the strategy that Martin finally adopts of a limited ‘coexistent phonemic system’ for such rare contrasts, since it not only provides for them, but automatically relates them to the ‘main’ system.