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

. In the next stratum of constraints, place any co-occurrence
constraints of the form *[F i, Φ], where Φ consists of feature
values of features ordered higher than F i.
c. In the next stratum, place the constraint MAX [F i].
d. Go to (a).
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e. In the next constraint stratum, place the constraint *[F], and end.
A sample constraint tableau is given in (6.16).
[PUT (6.16) ABOUT HERE]
In this example the input is overspecified with respect to the contrastive
specifications allowed by this contrastive hierarchy. The feature specifications of
the input vowel correctly characterize the phonetics of Manchu/i/, but in the
analysis in (6.12) the only contrastive features are [–low, +coronal]; the feature
values [–labial] and [+ATR] are present phonetically but not phonologically.
Candidates (a) and (b) maintain both or one of these noncontrastive features and
both are losers because they violate the co-occurrence constraint against having
[labial] together with [–low]. Candidate (c) is the winning output: it dispenses
with the features [labial] and [ATR], but retains [low] and [coronal], as required
by the contrastive hierarchy. Candidate (d) also retains two features of the input,
[low] and [labial], but loses because MAX [coronal] is ranked higher than MAX
[labial]. Candidate (e) retains three features in a licit configuration by changing
the input [+low] to [–low], but is immediately ruled out because this change
violates MAX [low]. Candidate (f) retains only [+coronal]. Though through logical
redundancy this would uniquely identify the phoneme /i/, it is ruled out as a