Even if the minimal utterance in a language cannot be unambiguously shown to coincide with a single moneme, one should not jump to the conclusion that it must necessarily be one of the subject-predicate type. It is easy to understand why so many languages have made it a rule never to use one moneme by itself: even when centring his attention on the existence of a single being, thing or process, a speaker will normally not be satisfied with the mere mention of that item, but will be inclined to locate it in time and space, or to connect it to himself or his interlocutors. These addictions are often conceived as actualizers, which seems to imply that the moneme by itself is an abstraction whose anchoring in reality can only be achieved by means of some element endowed with just that function. This view is supported by the nature of the subject, which is a moneme, likely to be found elsewhere in a variety of complemental functions, used here as the necessary accompaniment of a predicate, with a function perfectly characterized either by some privileged position as in English, or some functional mark in Latin.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.61