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

minimal pairs method was adopted for identifying contrastive features, with
unfortunate results. When feature hierarchies were proposed, they did not have
a clear connection to contrastive specification.
In the next two chapters the focus was on empirical evidence for the
Contrastivist Hypothesis and the contrastive hierarchy in the context of
contemporary conceptions of phonological theory. I outlined the main tenets of
the theory of Modified Contrastive Specification (MCS), in which the
Contrastivist Hypothesis is united with the contrastive hierarchy, and reviewed a
number of case studies that adopt this framework. I also looked at some other
contemporary approaches to contrast, arguing that the MCS approach accounts
better for the data.
This study has only touched on a few aspects of a multifaceted topic. I
hope to have shown that the contrastive hierarchy merits its former designation
as a ‘pivotal principle’ of linguistic structure, and that the Contrastivist
Hypothesis is a fruitful approach to phonological theory, capable of providing
illuminating analyses of phonological patterns, and posing interesting questions
that remain to be answered.
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