Components are therefore useful primarily when they are fully defined as to their various lengths and domains in various environments, and when utterances written componentally take full advantage of all abbreviations permitted by the component definitions, rather than spell out the successive phonemes in component representation. For example, if — is defined as a cluster-long devoicing component, we do not have to specify its length in each environment, since the length is determined by the environment: if it is more convenient, we can as readily write /æz'be — zdƏ — z/ as / æz'bezdƏz/ for 'asbestos'.
- Harris (1951), a pag.134