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

a definite place. In Lifu, the first division is voiceless ~ voiced. Then /h/ splits
away from the voiceless set, and can be interpreted along the lines of Ossetic ///.
Hockett’s grounds for adopting these diagrams are distributional. With
respect to Lifu, he notes (1955: 96) that ‘[d]istributional classification supports the
constitutional grouping indicated above: only voiced consonants (and all of them
except /w N g ƒ v/) occur finally.’ Thus, there are empirical grounds, based on
phonological patterning, for organizing segment inventories one way rather than
another. We see, then, that Hockett’s practice throughout the Manual is
inconsistent with his discussion of the French obstruents.
One could argue that Hockett viewed his diagrams simply as ways of
expressing distributional or other generalizations about inventories, and not as
expressing any ‘correct’ analysis of the grammar. Ultimately, it is not really
important if Hockett thought of his classifications as real or as useful fictions.
What is important is his practice, which is reminiscent of Trubetzkoy’s in this
sense: when he considers the problem of contrast in the abstract, he arrives at
conclusions that are not consistent with what he does when he needs to make
sense of actual data; in such cases, where there is real empirical evidence for
doing things a certain way, he assigns contrastive features in terms of a
language-particular contrastive hierarchy.
3.7. Prolegomenon to a theory of contrastive specification
In this chapter we have surveyed the work of some leading phonologists from
the structuralist period (Roman Jakobson will be discussed further in the next
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