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

Similar results can be shown to be true of the other complement rules. 13 If
the distinction between contrastive and redundant is important in phonology,
then the complement rules of RU fail to capture it.
With respect to phonological activity, there is no rationale for assigning a
privileged status to epenthesis as an indication of the underlying unspecified
vowel. In the case of Japanese, for example, Archangeli (1984) supposes that the
epenthetic vowel is /i/, and therefore assigns this vowel no underlying
specifications. By RU hypothesis, [–high], [+low], and [+back] must be specified
in Japanese, as shown in (5.25).
(5.25) Japanese underlying specifications (Archangeli 1984: 59–60)
i e a o u
high – –
low +
back + +
We observed in §3.3, however, that there are reasons, based on the way
vowels affect consonants, to suppose that Japanese /i/ is specified [+front]
(equivalently, [–back]), contrary to (5.25). Also contrary to (5.25), Hirayama
(2003) argues that /o/ must be contrastively specified for a feature indicating lip
rounding. Moreover, Hirayama (2003: 117–119) observes that u and o, as well as i,
13 The default rules in (5.23c) also do not distinguish contrastive from redundant values. DR2
assigns values of the feature [back], which are all redundant by any definition of contrast
applicable to Archangeli’s analysis. But DR1 also fills in [–round] on /a/; as is evident in (5.24),
this specification may be contrastive (b) or redundant (a).
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