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

and the rest of the features are retained or not to the extent that they fit into the
native contrastive system. To take another example involving Classical Manchu,
an input vowel /o/, which we will assume is specified [+low, –coronal, +labial,
+ATR] (i.e., the [+ATR] counterpart of /ç/), will first of all retain its [+low]
specification. Since [coronal] is excluded in the [+low] domain, that feature will
be filtered out. In this case, the exclusion of [coronal] has no perceptible effect,
since the vowel will in any case be phonetically [–coronal]. Continuing down the
hierarchy, [+low] vowels are all specified for [labial], so the [+labial] specification
is retained. Vowels specified [+low, +labial] admit of no further specification in
Classical Manchu, so the [+ATR] specification is filtered out. The prediction of
this approach is that an input /o/ will be converted to its (redundantly) non-
ATR counterpart, /ç/.
This is the result we obtain by following down the contrastive tree in
(6.12). If L2 words are borrowed following this approach, foreign sounds are
assigned to native categories by preserving the feature specifications with widest
scope at the expense of those with narrower scope. This is a purely hierarchical
approach to loan phonology. It is possible that L2 phonology works this way;
however, it is not necessary to apply the contrastive hierarchy to foreign sounds
in just this way. Other factors may intercede to lead to different results.
Consider again , for example, the three-vowel system in (6.10), where
[high] > [round]. Suppose we were to present the grammar with an input vowel
/o/, that is, a vowel specified [–high, +round]. Following a purely hierarchical
approach, we would require [–high] to be preserved above any other
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