The human language is made conspicuous by the phenomenon of the double articulation: all the human languages are doubly articulated communication systems.

When we give an account of any experiment by the means of the language, we use, on the one hand, of the significant units (units of first articulation) and on the other hand distinctive units (units of second articulation).

The first articulation is that which makes that the experiment returned by the language is articulated in successive and significant units, the monems. The monems thus have a form and a direction (one meaning and one meant, if one wants to do it parallel with the linguistic sign of Saussure). It combine between them to make it possible to create a statement having a significance. Concretely, if we take the example of the statement:

the cat sleeps

this one is composed of 3 monems: the monem " défini" having for form, the monem " chat" having for form and the monem " dormir" having for form (the singular is not a monem, if we had had " dormait" , an additional monem could have been counted). The monem is thus the smallest meaning unit existing, for which times, plural, etc are monems (contrary, a made up word as long chair 'will not be analyzed in two monems because long chair commutates with table , for example, it will be called synthème, because composed of 2 monems which are not right, in this case, their autonomy (one cannot say the very long chair under penalty of not indicating any more same reality, one will say the long chair very long ).

The form of the monems articulates in units smaller, called distinctive units, the phonemes. These units do not have a direction but have as a function to distinguish the monems between them. For example:

~,

the substitution of the phoneme /CH/ and /R/ involves a modification of the monem ~,

the opposition and (rolled) is not relevant in French, they are thus not different phonemes but achievements different from the same phoneme (thus, 2 different sounds but only one phoneme). The two pronunciations can coexist without that not changing the direction of the monem. On the other hand, in other languages, this opposition is relevant and one is well in the presence of 2 distinct phonemes. Another example, in Japanese, the opposition and is not relevant, those will be able to coexist without changing the direction of the monem, as for and in French.

It is the Linguiste André Martinet which has the first statement the double articulation of the language, which makes conspicuous the human language (in opposition to the formal languages):

One can schematize in the following way:

Nomenclature

Structure list words ex: dictionary fitting of combinations

One can make a comparison with a play of failure. Each part moves differently on the chess-board, but the combination of these parts makes that each part takes its value compared to the remainder of the play.

See too

• Andre Martinet