The usefulness of componental analysis is not that it yields a new, and more complicated, method of indicating each phoneme (as a particular combination of component ), but rather that it yields a system of base elements in terms of which the distribution of descriptively distinct sound features can most simply be identified. The test of usefulness of the analysis is that phonologic statements about utterances should be much simpler when couched in componental terms than in phonemic terms. This is possible because of the way components have been set up.
- Harris (1951), a pag.133