Allophones of the English phonemes 1 Allophones of /p
Distinctive Features: Jakobson et al
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- Jakobson, Fant and Halle (1952)
- Distinctive Features
- (a) features establish natural classes
- (b) economy
- (c) binarity
- (d) phonetic interpretation
Distinctive Features: Jakobson et alDistinctive FeaturesJakobson's Early Work on Distinctive FeaturesDistinctive feature theory was first formalised by Roman Jakobson in (1941) and remains one of the most significant contributions to phonology. There have been numerous refinements to Jakobson's (1941) set of features since that date, and these refinements will be dealt with in another topic. Briefly, Jacobson's original formulation of distinctive feature theory was based on the following ideas:-
Jakobson's features are primarily based on acoustic descriptions Jakobson, Fant and Halle (1952)Jakobson and Halle (1956)13 Distinctive FeaturesThis table shows an early set of distinctive features proposed by Jacobson and his colleagues. (Note: Do not use this set of features in any assessment tasks for this course. This table is provided as historical background only)
Distinctive FeaturesGeneral principlesDistinctive feature theory was first formalised by Roman Jakobson in 1941 (see the topic "Distinctive Features: Jakobson et al"). There have been numerous refinements to Jakobson's (1941) set of features, most notably with the development of Generative Phonology and the publication of Chomsky & Halle's (1968) Sound Pattern of English but also from phoneticians such as Ladefoged (1971), Fant (1973) and also Stevens (Halle & Stevens, 1971). In recent years, there have also been proposals that features should themselves be hierarchically structured and arranged on separate levels or tiers (e.g. Clements & Keyser, 1983) which is consistent with the developments in autosegmental phonology since the publication of the Sound Pattern of English. Regardless of the many differences and controversies, the various kinds of feature systems share the following characteristics.
The advantage of this approach is readily apparent in writing phonological rules. For example, we might want a rule which makes approximants voiceless when they follow aspirated stops in English. If we could not define phonemes in terms of distinctive features, we would have to have separate rules, such as [l] becomes voiceless after /k/ ('claim'), /r/ becomes voiceless after /k/ ('cry'), /w/ becomes voiceless after /k/ ('quite'), /j/ becomes voiceless after /k/ ('cute'), and then the same again for all the approximants that can follow /p/ and /t/. If we define phonemes as bundles of features, we can state the rule more succinctly as e.g. [+sonorant, -syllabic, +continuant] sounds (i.e. all approximants) become [+spread glottis] (aspirated) after sounds which are [+spread glottis] (aspirated). If the features are well chosen, it should be possible to refer to natural classes of phonemes with a small number of features. For example, [p t k] form a natural class of voiceless stops in most languages: we can often refer to these and no others with just two features, [-continuant, -voiced]. On the other hand, [m] and [d] are a much less natural class (ie. few sound changes and few, if any, phonological rules, apply to them both and appropriately it is impossible in most feature systems to refer to these sounds and no others in a single feature matrix). (b) economyIn phonology, and particularly in Generative Phonology, we are often concerned to eliminate redundancy from the sound pattern of a language or to explain it by rule. Distinctive features allow the possibility of writing rules using a considerably smaller number of units than the phonemes of a language. Consider for example, a hypothetical language that has 12 consonant and 3 vowel phonemes:
We could refer to all these phonemes with perhaps just 6 distinctive features - a reduction of over half the number of phoneme units which also allows natural classes to be established amongst them:
At the same time, each phoneme is uniquely represented, as shown by the distinctive feature matrix:
(c) binarityWe have assumed that features are binary (a segment is either nasal or it is not) following Jakobson's (1941) original formulation of distinctive feature theory and this premise was adopted in Chomsky & Halle's (1968) Sound Pattern of English. There were many reasons why Jakobson (1941) advocated a binary approach. Firstly, as we have seen, this is the most efficient way of reducing the phoneme inventory of a language. Secondly, he argued that most phonological oppositions are binary in nature (e.g. sounds either are or are not produced with a lowered soft-palate and nasalisation) and he even proposed that it has a physiological basis i.e. that nerve fibers have an 'all-or-none' response. But the binary principal is certainly not adopted by all linguists, and many phoneticians in particular have argued that some features should be n-ary (see for example, Ladefoged's 1993 treatment of vowel height which is 4-valued to reflect the distinction between close, half-close, half-open, and open vowels). (d) phonetic interpretationAccording to Jakobson (1941), the distinctive features should have definable articulatory and acoustic correlates. For example, [+nasal] implies a lowering of the soft-palate and also an increase in the ratio of energy in the low to the high part of the spectrum. Chomsky & Halle (1968) abandoned the acoustic definitions of acoustic features (inappropriately, as Ladefoged, 1971 and many others have argued: consider that [f] and [x] are related acoustically but not articulatorily and they participated in the sound change by which the pronunciation of 'gh' spellings in English changed from a velar to a labiodental fricative e.g. 'laugh', [lɑx]→[lɑf]). Many of the features are defined loosely in phonetic terms. This is perhaps to be expected. Phonology has necessarily established highly abstract representations to explain sound alternations (i.e. to factor out what are concerned redundant or predictable aspects of a word's pronunciation) and this abstraction is partly opposed to the principle in phonetics of describing in articulatory and acoustic terms the characteristics of speech sound production that are shared by linguistic communities. Nevertheless, if phonology is to be related to how words are actually pronounced, the features are required to have at least some phonetic basis to them. Directory: newuploads newuploads -> Phonology What is Phonology? First we should know that the study of speech sounds is: 1- phonetics. 2- phonology. Phonetics is concerns with the following newuploads -> Ch. 1 Manufacturing Introduction : Manufacturing Download 0.83 Mb. Share with your friends:
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