autonomous (adj.)

A term often used in discussing the status of LINGUISTICS as a science: the implication is that the subject of language is now studied in its own terms, no longer being dependent on the incidental interest of scholars from other disciplines, such as logic, literary criticism, or history. The autonomy of the subject is seen in the emergence, during the second half of the twentieth century, of a wide range of degree courses in linguistics.

In PHONOLOGY, the term is used to characterize the notion of a PHONEME when no reference is made to its relationships with GRAMMATICAL (especially WORD) STRUCTURE. The autonomous phoneme, in this sense, is contrasted with the MORPHOPHONEME, or the SYSTEMATIC PHONEME of GENERATIVE linguistics, where other factors than the strictly phonemic are allowed into the analysis.