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

[PUT (4.3) ABOUT HERE (see end of chapter)]
Language acquisition will be discussed further in §7.8. For now, it is
important to observe that the arguments from perception and acquisition
discussed above provide empirical evidence in support of the contrastive
hierarchy. Over time, however, the emphasis began to shift toward non-
empirical considerations of efficient coding and reducing redundancy, and this
emphasis eventually led away from the Contrastivist Hypothesis. These
developments are discussed in the following sections.
4.4. Feature ordering and efficient coding
Cherry, Halle and Jakobson (1953) consider some properties of phonemic
structure in terms of mathematical concepts relevant to the then-emerging field
of statistical communication theory. In their article, they explicitly adopt feature
ordering: ‘For the purpose of identifying one particular phoneme out of the set
employed by the language, the distinctive features may be regarded as questions
to be answered yes or no.’ They make it clear that these questions must be asked
in an order, and point out that the logic employed is three-valued, yes (+), no (–),
and zero, which they take to mean that either answer can be given.
The authors make some observations about the number of feature
specifications required to differentiate any number of phonemes. For example,
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