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

constructing a branching diagram’. Stanley remarks that the required
distribution of non-redundant features is not always found. This comment
appears to assume that branching trees are constructed working back from
feature specifications, rather than looking at it the other way round — that
specifications are the consequence of the branching tree. Stanley (1967: 408) notes
that generative grammars have been chosen that have a branching diagram of
this kind, and summarizes the reasons why it was regarded as important to have
such a diagram:
(1) Giving segments in a branching diagram appears to be the most
direct means, involving the fewest feature specifications, which will
guarantee that each pair of segments is DISTINCT in the sense that
for any pair of different segments there is at least one feature f such
that one member of the pair is specified +f and the other –f. (2) The
branching diagram gives a hierarchy of features which can be
interpreted as meaning that the features at high nodes (such as
Consonantal) are in some sense more basic than the features at low
nodes (such as Voiced). (3) The branching diagram gives a way of
formalizing the notion of the archiphoneme.
Stanley proceeds to take issue with each of these assumptions. He argues
that the Distinctness Condition is both too strong and too weak. It is too weak
because it does not prevent ‘specious simplifications’ of rules obtained by
improper use of blanks, an issue we considered above. The Distinctness
Condition is too strong, in Stanley’s view, because it does not omit all logically
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