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

6.3.2. Contrast as an emergent
Kirchner (1997: 84) diagrams a standard representational model of contrastive
specification as in (6.9). 2
(6.9) Representational contrastive specification (Kirchner 1997: 84)
Underlying representation (ideally) pure representation of
Phonological component
Phonetic component
contrast
non-contrastive properties may be
filled in, particularly if contrastive in
other languages
remaining non-contrastive phonetic
properties, including gradient values,
filled in
Phonetic representation representation of all speaker-controlled
phonetic properties of the utterance
Kirchner (1997: 83–84) cites Steriade (1995) as observing that ‘the
assumptions of this model have often been disregarded in practice’ because
phonologists have not been consistent in which redundant features they choose
to remove. We have already discussed this objection to underspecification theory
2 This model is weaker than the Contrastivist Hypothesis, in that it allows some noncontrastive
features to be added in the phonological component; it remains an empirical question whether
the hypothesis has to be weakened to allow something like (6.9), a question I consider further in
§7.9.
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