Allophones of the English phonemes 1 Allophones of /p


An overview of commonly used distinctive features



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An overview of commonly used distinctive features


The features described in Halle & Clements (1983) have been commonly used in the phonology literature in their analyses of the sound patterns of various languages. They incorporate many insights of the original features devised by Jakobson (1941) but are mostly based on those of the Sound Pattern of English, taking into account some modifications suggested by Halle & Stevens (1971). Most of these are also discussed below.

1. Major class features


Four features [syll], [cons], [son], [cont] (syllabic, consonantal, sonorant, continuant) are used to divide up speech sounds into major classes, as follows:

 

syll

cons

son

cont

vowels

+

-

+

+

oral stops and affricates

-

+

-

-

nasal stops

-

+

+

-

fricatives

-

+

-

+

liquids

-

+

+

+

semi-vowels

-

-

+

+

Note that the approximants have been divided into liquids (eg. in English /r, l/) and semi-vowels (eg. in English /w, j/). In this, and most other distinctive feature sets derived from Chomsky and Halle. Semi-vowels (being [-syll, -cons]) form a class of sounds intermediate between vowels ([+syll]) and consonants ([+cons]). The approximants can be defined as a class by the features [-syll, +son, +cont] and can be further sub-divided into liquids and semi-vowels using the [cons] feature.

We also have a feature [nasal] which, as its name suggests, separates nasal from oral sounds. In the above table, [nasal] would have been redundant as the nasal stops are already defined uniquely as [-syll, +cons, +son, -cont] (ie. as sonorant stops). The feature [nasal] is still required, however, to define nasal stops, nasalised vowels and nasalised approximants as a single natural class.


2. Source features


These are related to the source (vocal fold vibration that sustains voiced sounds or a turbulent airstream that sustains many voiceless sounds).

The feature [voice] is self-explanatory (with or without vocal fold vibration). The feature [spread glottis] is used to distinguish aspirated from unaspirated stops (aspirated stops are initially produced with the vocal folds drawn apart). We can therefore make the following distinctions:



 

voiced

spread glottis

p

-

-

b

+

-



-

+

The [strident] feature is used by Halle and Clements for those fricatives produced with high-intensity fricative noise: supposedly labiodentals, alveolars, palato-alveolars, and uvulars are [+strident]. There seems to be little acoustic phonetic basis to the claim that labiodentals and alveolars pattern acoustically (as opposed to dentals). In this course, we will use Ladefoged's feature [sibilant] which is defined by Ladefoged (1971) in acoustic terms as including those fricatives with 'large amounts of acoustic energy at high frequencies' i.e. [s ʃ z ʒ]. The English affricates would therefore be [+sibilant]:

 

cont

sibilant

oral stops

-

-

affricates

-

+

sibilant fricatives

+

+

non-sibilant fricatives

+

-


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