Emicness

Then there is the factor of frequency — not the sole factor for arriving at load determinations, but one factor nevertheless. Immense for French 'word'-final stress, it is fairly low for English /h/ or /ŋ/ yet high for either of those units in comparison with the frequency of /ž/. Again, emicness is not the decisive issue.

Quine (in Shahan and Merrill 1977¹⁸¹, and see III, above) in dealing with 'observation sentences' (e.g. in pointing at things) is touching implicitly on the emicness of insider viewpoints, when he says that 'The main thing to settle, in the way of fixing objects, is their individuation: we have to fix standards of sameness and difference.' For tagmemics, emic sameness is relative to the insider viewpoint.

This is true even when the inquiry deals with phenomena that have been initially emically defined (though the degree of emicness or eticness will have to be qualified).