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

on). Of the possible potential classes, only those with distinct members make up
a natural class. In our example, there are 11 natural classes (8.19).
(8.19) Natural classes derived from (8.18)
a. [syll, open, round, back] /o/ b. [syll, open, front] /e/
c. [syll, high, round, back] /u/ d. [syll, high, front] /i/
e. [syll, low, back] /a/
f. [syll, round, back] /o, u/ g. [syll, front] /i, e/
h. [syll, open] /e, o/ i. [syll, high] /i, u/
j. [syll, back] /a, o, u/
k. [syll] /i, e, a, o, u/
To see how the inventory influences the number of natural classes,
consider /a/ (8.19e), which is characterized as [syllabic, low, back]. /a/ is the
only low vowel in the inventory, so it is uniquely characterized as [low], as
[syllabic, low], and as [low, back]. But because all these classes have the same
membership, they count as only one natural class, represented by the most fully
specified description.
The similarity measure for each pair of phonemes is shown in (8.20). It
rates /u, o/ as the most similar pair, more similar to each other than the
seemingly parallel /i, e/. The parallelism is disturbed by the fact that /u, o/ are
both [back] as well as [round], whereas /i, e/ share only [front]. Therefore, /u,
o/ share 3 classes ( [syllabic, round, back], [syllabic, back], and [syllabic]),
whereas /i, e/ share only 2 ([syllabic, front] and [syllabic]).
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