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

formulated in order to account for phonological patterning. It is not a question of
what memories may be stored in the brain, but of how the phonology is
organized.
Reacting to the proliferation of phonetic detail in recent approaches to
phonology, some phonologists have been exploring minimalist theories of
phonological representation (Hyman 2001, 2002, 2003, Morén 2003, 2006).
Clements 2001, 2003, 2004 has argued that feature economy plays a role in
accounting for phonological inventories (see Hall 2007 for discussion). Avery and
Idsardi (2001) argue for representational economy and underspecification
drawing on evidence from laryngeal systems. Versions of phonological
minimalism can be found in other phonological traditions as well, such as
Dependency Phonology (Anderson and Ewen 1987, Anderson 2005, Carr,
Durand and Ewen 2005), and Radical CV Phonology (van der Hulst 1995, 1996,
2005).
7.3. Ubiquitous feature hierarchies
The theory of the contrastive feature hierarchy makes two empirical claims. The
first claim is that distinctive features in each language are organized into a
hierarchy. The second claim is that this hierarchy determines which feature
values are contrastive in a given language. In this section I will focus on the first
claim, and argue that feature hierarchies are widespread in the practice, and in
many cases also the theory, of phonology. So ubiquitous are they that it is
impossible to avoid considerations of feature ordering in almost any
275