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

statements in (8.33) are active the only vowels permitted are /i, a, u/. These
vowels thus have a Degree of Complexity of 0. Deactivating (8.33a) enables a
vowel to be specified [–low, –high], adding the vowels /E, ç/ to the basic set.
These vowels have Degree of Complexity 1.
The marking statements predict that an [ATR] contrast must be added to
inventories in the order shown in (8.35).
(8.35) Order of expansion of vowel inventories (Calabrese 2005)
a. Unmark (8.33a) b. Unmark (8.33b)
i u i u
e o
E ç E ç
a a
c. Unmark (8.33e) d. Unmark (8.33h)
i u i u
I U I U
e o e o
E ç E ç
a A a
An [ATR} contrast must be added in the mid vowels (8.35b), before it can be
added in the high vowels (8.35c), and both of these must be present before an
[ATR] contrast can be added in the low vowels (8.35e). This generalization may
hold of Romance, and of typical African languages with ATR or RTR vowel
contrasts, but it does not appear to be true of Manchu-Tungus languages, which
typically have two height classes, each of which may have ATR or RTR contrasts.
In these languages, there is no phonological class of [–low, –high] vowels, though
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