[…] A moneme may, in some contexts, appear as a clear-cut segment, but in others, be merged with the 'signifiant' of some other moneme (or monemes), as when Fr. 'à', which is generally /a/, even before the masculine article 'à l’hôpital' (/al. . . ./), is amalgamated with that same article in 'au moulin' (/o. . . /) […] A moneme may never appear as the separate segment because its 'signifiant' is always amalgamated with that of some other moneme (or monemes); still the indipendent existence of the monemes involved is never endangered; in Latin the dative moneme never appears as a segment which was not at the same time the 'signifiant' of the moneme of singular or that of plural […] A moneme may have a discontinous 'signifiant', its use by the speaker implying some formal modifications in two or more different places in the utterance: in Latin the moneme usually identified as 'sine' ‘without’, was necessarily accompanied by a specific (‘ablative’) ending of the noun whose function was being indicated, so that in 'sine dubio', its 'signifiant' included /sine/, plus the /. . . ō/ of 'dubio', in which, however, the 'signifiant' of the singular moneme was amalgamated.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.91-92

It is not true that any utterance can be analysed into a neat succession of monemes, each with its own nicely wrapped-up meaning and clear- cut segment. When I say 'he cut', where is my segment corresponding to the meaning ‘past’? In French 'elle va au marché', with 'au' single phoneme /o/, what slice should I ascribe to my preposition and what slice to my definite article ? As regards our second articulation, we have seen before how difficult is to analyse into phonematic segments words like 'ice' and 'out', and I have suggested that our failure may reflect less imperfection of our method than a factual indeterminacy. Our answer will be that we have not said, or implied, that the whole of language, as represented by corresponding speech, could be exhaustively reduced to successions of monemes and phonemes. We have said simply that what we want to call a language makes use of phonemes and monemes; whether it adds to them other tricks which may at the time blur or distort some features of double articulation is not matter.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.27-28

The criterion of syntactic autonomy points to a threefold distinction among monemes: we have first monemes that carry within themselves the indication of their own function and which we shall designate as autonomous monemes: French 'vite', 'hier', 'demain', 'dimanche' in 'il viendra dimanche', are autonomous monemes; in English there seem to be few clearly autonomous monemes of that type, but autonomous compounds such as 'last night', 'next week' are at least as frequent as in French, where we have 'hier soir', 'la semaine prochaine' […] Next, we have monemes that do not imply any definite relation to the rest of the utterance and will therefore be available for several different functions. Of course, every one of these functions will have to be indicated somehow, either by position or by means of some additional element. These monemes could be called dependants; 'village' is a dependant. Last, we have monemes which secure autonomy for other monemes to which they are attached, by indicating their function, i.e. their relation to the rest of the utterance.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.45

The moneme is a Saussurian sign, a unit with a meaning and a phonic shape, i.e on which combines something that is not manifest with its outward manifestation. It belongs to the two planes expression and contents, and it is the smallest segment that does. The phoneme has a phonic shape, but no meaning. It is pure manifestation and belongs exclusively to the plane of expression.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.39-40

We are thus induced to accept, at least as a pragmatic assumption, the view that there exist in all languages some distinction between monemes as regards the extent to which they may assume the various existing functions. In no language are all monemes used indiscriminately as function-endowed and function marking. In other words, there is no language without grammar. But once unambiguous function-marking secured, there is no universally valid reason why any moneme, except one that is specifically a function-mark, should be excluded from any function, whether predicative or non-predicative. Still, specialization is very widespread.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.64

What characterizes linguistic communication and opposes it to prelinguistic groans is precisely this analysis into a number of units which, because of their vocal nature, are to be presented successively in a linear fashion. These are the units which many contemporary linguists call ‘morphemes’. But in view of the fact that a number of the others use ‘morpheme’ for different purposes, I prefer calling them ‘monemes’. Monemes are the smallest segments of the speech that have some meaning attached to them. According to a Saussurian terminology, they are minimal ‘signs’, with two faces: 'signifiant' and 'signifié'.
- Martinet (1962), a pag.22