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

these features. And yet, none of the features listed above are uncontroversially
contrastive. Assuming that English /t/ and /d/ differ only in their laryngeal
specifications, it is possible that /t/ is contrastively voiceless, though other
laryngeal features are also possible: thus, /t/ and /d/ differ also in aspiration
(/t/ is aspirated, /d/ is not), and in tension (/t/ has a tenser articulation than
/d/). It is not obvious which of these laryngeal features is contrastive in English.
Similarly, we could agree that /t/ differs from /p/ and /k/ with respect to its
place of articulation, but it is not obvious that this feature should be designated
dental as opposed to the more general coronal.
The other contrasts are even more problematic. /t/ is opposed to /n/ not
only in nasality but also in voicing (/t/ is voiceless, /n/ is voiced) and sonority
(/t/ is an obstruent, /n/ is a sonorant): how do we know that nasality is the
contrastive feature and not one of the others? And while /t/ differs from the
continuants /s/ and /T/ in being a stop, it also differs from these phonemes in
various other ways. For example, /t/ is non-strident , in contrast to /s/, and apical
in contrast to /T/. How do we know, then, that the contrastive features of /t/
are those designated by Anderson and not any of the alternatives?
This example is not intended to show that Anderson (1985) was being
particularly imprecise; on the contrary, Anderson is more careful than most, and
his discussion of the contrastive features of /t/ is entirely typical of what one
finds throughout the literature. Anderson's choices are not obviously wrong, but
it is not clear that they are right, either. More fundamentally, he provides no
procedure for making such distinctions, nor does he discuss how such decisions
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