The contrastive hierarchy in phonology 2009 Dresher.pdf - CUNY ...

Twaddell (1935)…’ 16 Second, the narrower differences in point of articulation are
‘minute’ and ‘hardly recognizable’ by themselves. Third, they find that the
distinctions between /s ~ /f/ and /t/ ~ /p/ involve the same contrast, as do
/k/ ~ /t/ and /S/ ~ /s/. 17
3.6. Hockett: French contrasts and the ’odor of pure game-playing’
C. F. Hockett’s A Manual of Phonology (1955) is an outstanding example of late
Bloomfieldian American structuralism. This theory is characterized by an
unyielding empiricism with respect to both science and psychology. In terms of
science, Hockett (1955: 2) writes at the outset, ‘It would be well to state explicitly
that our view will be empiric: I accept Bloomfield’s assertion that “the only
useful generalizations about language are inductive generalizations”’. With
respect to psychology, Hockett inherited Bloomfield’s extreme antimentalism
that rules out any role for the mind in a scientific description. Together, this
scientific empiricism and psychological behaviourism keep any theorizing about
the grammar confined to rather narrow limits.
16 This calculation assumes the worst case, that the narrower points of articulation are not
generated by binary features along the lines used in their own solution.
17 Note that whereas Jakobson and Lotz’s (1949) arguments primarily involve phonological
patterning and phonological activity, Jakobson and Halle (1956) focus less on activity and more
on arguments of economy, part of a shift in emphasis from phonological activity to economy that
will be discussed in the next chapter.
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