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

contrastive hierarchy, as used by Halle 1959. We will see that the main
arguments against contrastive specification rest on the assumption that
underspecification of a feature is merely a matter of notation and should have no
empirical consequences for how the phonology works.
4.8.1. Zeros and ternary power
Following Lightner (1963), Stanley (1967: 413) points out that the presence of
unspecified feature values in the phonology raises formal questions about how
rules apply in such situations. He shows that, whatever the definition, there is
the danger that binary features will be used in a ternary manner, whereby 0
contrasts with both + and –.
He gives the example of the initial matrices in (4.17a). Phoneme A has no
specification for feature f, B is [+f], and C is [–f]. In the view of redundancy rules
commonly held at the time, the omission of a feature value in A is simply
supposed to be a way of reducing the information content of a segment, as
indicated by the number of symbols that need to be specified for it. Since f is a
binary feature, it should only be able to make a binary distinction. Thus, A has
either the specification [+f] or [–f], but this specification is omitted in underlying
representation because it is redundant in this segment.
(4.17) Rule application: Sub-matrix interpretation (Stanley 1967: 413)
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a. Initial matrices
A B C
⎡ ⎤
⎣ ⎢ : ⎦ ⎥
⎡ +f
⎣ ⎢ :
⎤
⎦ ⎥
⎡ -f
⎣ ⎢ :
⎤
⎦ ⎥
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