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

eing equal, this implies that a sonorant will be unspecified for [voiced] at the
surface.
(6.7) Some redundancy rules
a. SONVOI: [sonorant] ⊃ [voiced]
b. NASVOI: [nasal] ⊃ [voiced]
Itô, Mester and Padgett’s approach implies a hierarchy of features in
which [sonorant] and [nasal] are higher than [voiced]. Without such a hierarchy,
the theory runs into the problems with logical redundancy that we discussed
earlier. Thus, it is also true in most languages that a nasal is predictably sonorant.
Does this mean that feature cancellation requires that nasal segments not be
specified for [sonorant]? Presumably not, but one would have to explain why. In
a contrastive hierarchy approach, it is because [sonorant] generally has wider
contrastive scope than [nasal]; thus, nasal segments are a subtype of sonorants,
whereas sonorants are not a subtype of nasals. Similarly, we need to know why
we do not cancel the license of Russian affricates to be marked for voice because
coronal affricate implies voicelessness. So we still need a theory to tell us when a
crucial redundancy exists, just to make licensing cancellation well defined. The
contrastive hierarchy is one such theory.
Let us now turn to the relation between contrast and phonological
activity. Itô, Mester and Padgett write (1995: 608) that the ranking of licensing
constraints and redundancy rules like SONVOI with respect to each other tips the
scales in favour either of specification or underspecification. That is, if we rank
Licensing above Redundancy, then a sonorant (in this case /m/) will be
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