[Speech sounds and speech signals--the perspective of a new phonometry (author's transl)]

Descriptive phonetics and instrumental phonetics have two entirely different empirical domains as their subject matters. On this basis, ZWIRNER's central problem of the theoretical relationship between sound category and sound realisation is re-formulated and discussed. It is shown how the traditional descriptive procedures of segmentation and decomposition can be connected with the segments of digital speech signals and the features analysed from them.