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

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(5.19) Russian consonants: partial feature <strong>hierarchy</strong><br />

consonants<br />

qp<br />

[–sonorant] [+sonorant]<br />

ru<br />

/m, nJ, lJ, r.../<br />

[coronal]<br />

qp<br />

[–voiced] [+voiced]<br />

ru ru<br />

/tJ, t, sJ, ts, tS…/ /dJ, d, zJ, Z…/<br />

<strong>The</strong> partial feature <strong>hierarchy</strong> <strong>in</strong> (5.19) shows that sonorants have no<br />

<strong>contrastive</strong> specification for [voiced]; the unpaired obstruents, however, are<br />

<strong>contrastive</strong>ly specified [–voiced], just like every other voiceless obstruent. <strong>The</strong>se<br />

different scope relations provide a pr<strong>in</strong>cipled basis for dist<strong>in</strong>guish<strong>in</strong>g between<br />

the sonorants and unpaired obstruents. 10<br />

Kiparsky (1985: 135n3) comes close to relat<strong>in</strong>g the acquisition of mark<strong>in</strong>g<br />

conditions to a feature <strong>hierarchy</strong>, comment<strong>in</strong>g that ‘universal grammar will<br />

10 Structure Preservation rema<strong>in</strong>s an unclear pr<strong>in</strong>ciple, however, because it is not clear what<br />

‘structures’ must be preserved. Given a <strong>contrastive</strong> <strong>hierarchy</strong> as <strong>in</strong> (5.19), one could <strong>in</strong>terpret<br />

Structure Preservation to require that no comb<strong>in</strong>ation of features may be formed that do not<br />

correspond to an underly<strong>in</strong>g segment. On this <strong>in</strong>terpretation, [+voiced] may not be assigned to<br />

/ts/ because there is no underly<strong>in</strong>g /dz/. Structure Preservation can be <strong>in</strong>terpreted more<br />

liberally, however, as prohibit<strong>in</strong>g the assignment of a non<strong>contrastive</strong> feature to a segment. Thus,<br />

no value of [voiced] may be assigned to a sonorant, but /ts/ would be able to receive [+voiced].<br />

See further §8.3 and the discussion of systematic and accidental gaps <strong>in</strong> §8.6.3.<br />

189

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