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

3.3. Trubetzkoy: A theory of oppositions
The phonologist who did the most to develop the principle of contrast as an
organizing principle of phonology was N. S. Trubetzkoy. His Grundzüge der
Phonologie, written in the 1930s, is a major statement of the Prague School
approach to phonology. In this work, Trubetzkoy’s aim is to present an
exhaustive account of the various types of contrastive oppositions that can exist
in a phonological system. The influence of his approach can be found in many
subsequent schools of linguistics. Therefore, Trubetzkoy’s approach to contrast is
central to our investigation.
Trubetzkoy made major contributions to our understanding of how
contrast functions in phonological systems. One of his key insights is that the
determination of contrastive features in an inventory is not self-evident but must
be established by the analyst on the basis of the patterning of the phonological
system. I will also show that the notion of feature hierarchy as a way to depict
contrastive relations makes an appearance —perhaps its earliest appearance — in
the Grundzüge. However, his account of contrastive relations is crucially
incomplete, because it is not explicit with respect to how contrasts are assigned.
More than that, I will show that Trubetzkoy (1939) does not follow a consistent
approach to contrast, but varies between the pairwise approach and feature
ordering. The former predominates in the earlier parts of the book, where the
discussion tends to be abstract and mainly theoretical, with no direct empirical
consequences. In later sections, where Trubetzkoy has empirical evidence for
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