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

(2.30) Contrastive specifications: Privative features
a. [voiced] > [nasal] b. [nasal] > [voiced]
p b m p b m
√ √ [voiced] √
√ [nasal] √
We observe that the effect of feature ordering is greatly reduced with
privative features as opposed to equipollent features. This is because privative
features conflate two situations that are distinct in equipollent features; the two
are compared in (2.31).
(2.31) Contrastive specifications with equipollent and privative features
a. Equipollent features
Member M is contrastively specified for a feature F iff M
contrasts with at least one other member with respect to F.
b. Privative features
Member M is contrastively specified for a feature F iff M
contrasts with at least one other member with respect to feature
F, and M is marked for F.
Looking at it from the other side, M will remain unspecified for F in a
privative system if either (i) F is not contrastive in M, or (ii) M is unmarked for F;
whereas in an equipollent system, M will remain unspecified for F in case (i), but
will receive a value for F in case (ii). This means that in a privative system we
cannot tell from the representations which unmarked segments are contrastive;
nor can we reconstruct what the scope of a contrast is, because only the marked
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