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

Linking crucially depends on the feature hierarchy inherent in the
marking conventions, for the only feature values that can be affected by linking
are those that are ordered after the feature directly changed by the rule. This
result would be expected given specification governed by the contrastive
hierarchy. If a potentially contrastive feature, like [round] in the above example,
is not in fact contrastive in a segment, it must be that some other contrastive
feature that draws a related contrast, in this case [back], is ordered above it in the
hierarchy. The noncontrastive features are left unspecified and take on their
default values, given the specified (contrastive) features.
Moreover, Chomsky and Halle (1968: 423) observe that for the phonology
to fully benefit from linking, it must allow the successive application of all
markedness conventions that apply to a given rule as well as to any markedness
convention that links to that rule. That is, if a rule, R, changes a feature value to
[αF], and a marking convention, C1, assigns [uG] to [βG] in the context of [αF],
then C1 links to R. But then so, too, does marking convention, C2, that assigns
[uH] to [γH] in the context of [βG] and other relevant features, and so on.
In other words, when a rule changes a feature value, all features ordered
below it revert to their unmarked values, as if they had never been specified. In
this way, linking effects a temporary despecification of subordinate features.
Moreover, in the usual case these features are also noncontrastive in the relevant
domain. In this way, the linking convention mimics contrastive specification via
a contrastive hierarchy.
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