Phonetic space is the range of sounds that can be made by an individual. There is some controversy over whether an individual's phonetic space is language dependent, or if there exists some common, innate, phonetic space across languages. Phonetic Space is a concept pioneered by Martin Joos in 1948 and developed by Gordon E. Peterson in 1951 and Noam Chomsky in 1968. Chomsky developed the idea that phonetic space is universal and every human is born with a discrete phonetic space. The most cited rebuttal of Chomsky's proposal of a universal and discrete phonetic space is an article by Port and Leary titled, "Against Formal Phonology". Applications of phonetic space include interlanguage phonetic comparison and phonological analysis. Definition A definition of phonetic space is not agreed upon, the concept varying in use and meaning depending on the author in question. Some similarities and constants can, however, be drawn. One thing that is known, phonetic space is universal; every human that uses verbal communication obtains a discrete phonetic space. This space is the distribution of vowels perceived by the speaker. The recognition of words, and specifically the vowels within these words, is achieved by noting a perceived difference between one sound and another. The act of comparing these competing sounds and categorizing them within the mind is the creation of a phonetic space. The identity of each sound is a conglomerate of ideas and concepts composed of categories such as: VOT (Voice Onset Time), Amplitude Rise-Time, Formant Frequency, Bandwidth, Formant Transition, and Energy-Density Maximum. Not all of these categories are used for every sound, however in building an individual phonetic space, the aforementioned attributes are oftentimes integral to the differentiation process used by the mind to successfully distinguish between any two competing sounds. Based on these ideas, the Vowel Quadrilateral is used to show what the realization of these basic would look like, and helps to visually conceptualize the separation of competing phonetic space that occurs within the human mind. Controversy In 2005, Robert F. Port and Adam P. Leary published an argument against the existence of a fixed phonetic inventory. They presented the idea of a phonetic space as unrealistic in terms of the broadness of languages present and more specifically that languages are not consistent in distinctness, discreteness, or temporal patterns, even within the same language. They argue that in order for a formal system to exist, it must