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

universal; we will see in §7.4 that Manchu-Tungus and Mongolian vowel
systems have [coronal] > [labial].
Studies in MCS that demonstrate variability in the feature hierarchy
include work on vowel systems (Aka: Balcaen 1998; Japanese: Hirayama 2003;
Manchu-Tungus: Zhang 1996; Mandarin: Zhou 1999; Miogliola: Ghini 2001a, b;
Persian: Rohany Rahbar 2006, 2008; Québecois: Mercado 2002; Sumerian: Smith
2006; Yokuts: D’Arcy 2003a) and consonant systems (Czech: Hall 1998, 2007, in
press; Inuktitut: Compton 2008; Japanese: Rice 1997, 2005; Latvian: Vilks 2002;
Mandarin: Wu 1994; Old English: Moulton 2003; Vietnamese: Pham 1997, 1998).
Variations are observed in the feature hierarchy for place of articulation (Rice
1996) , stop vs. continuant consonants, and height vs. place for vowels. Avery
1996 found evidence for variation in voicing systems. In tone systems, high tones
are unmarked in some languages and low tones in others (Rice 1999, 2003, Rice
and Hargus 2005).
It remains to determine the limits of this variation. It may be, for example,
that some of the cross-linguistic variation is related to differences in the structure
of inventories (Béjar 1998, Casali 2003, Herd 2005). That there are limits is
suggested by the fact that certain feature orders produce unnatural-looking
inventories, as shown in §7.3.
7.2.3. Phonology and phonetics
A consequence of the MCS approach is that phonology is necessarily
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underspecified with respect to phonetics: the number and nature of contrasts that