ABSTRACT
Linguistics is a discipline of great intricacy: students have to learn to manipulate and interrelate small bits of data. At the same time, linguistic theory tends to be quite abstract; to neophytes the theory they read about seems quite unconnected to the phonemes and morphemes they see strewn across a homework assignment. Bloomfield's sentence “Phonemes contrast” is straightforward to the initiated—indeed, elegant in its simplicity; to the uninitiated, however, it is opaque and unhelpful. Linguistics instructors are challenged to make visible both the forest and the trees.
