Abstract
This paper is a reply to Giovanna Marotta’s (2010; SSL XLVIII) review of Albano Leoni’s book Dei suoni e dei sensi. Il volto fonico delle parole. The Author disagrees with the following assumptions, i.e.: a) that formalization in linguistics aims at representing and predicting speech processes; b) that one should distinguish between linguistic and extralinguistic aspects of speech communication, especially in analyzing processes which generate meanings and allow to interpret them (e.g. the prosody); c) the autonomy of Western phonological theories from the alphabetical script (on the contrary, according to the Author, the phoneme represents an epiphenomenon of the letter); d) the primitive nature of the phoneme and of the discrete representation of speech; e) the hypothesis of the innate nature of the human symbolic faculty.