The concept of the 'phoneme' (a functionally significant unit in the rigidly defined pattern or configuration of sounds peculiar to a language), as distinct from that of 'sound' [...] as such [...] is becoming more and more familiar to linguists.
- Sapir (1933b), a pag.46

[...] we implicitly make a distinction, whether we know it or not, between the phoneme and the sound in that particular framework of experience which is known as language (actualized in speech).
- Sapir (1933b), a pag.46

[...] what the naïve speaker hears is not phonetic elements but phonemes.
- Sapir (1933b), a pag.47

In the physical world the naïvw speaker and hearer actualize and are sensitive to sounds, but what they feel to be pronouncing and hearing are 'phonemes'.
- Sapir (1933b), a pag.47