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

that these features are contrastive in n, it must be that he was not thinking of the
feature ordering method in this discussion of French. 5
Further examples of what appears to be extraction of contrasts based on
pairwise comparisons can be shown to occur in Trubetzkoy 1939, particularly
from the front of the book. To mention just one more here, his analysis of
bilateral oppositions in German vowels (Trubetzkoy 1969: 69–70) can be shown
to be based on pairwise comparisons applied to fully specified representations,
and are inconsistent with any feature ordering approach to contrastive
specification.
It should be noted that Trubetzkoy adduces no empirical evidence in
support of these analyses; thus, it is unclear what consequences, if any, flow from
them. This is in striking contrast to the examples to be discussed in the following
section, which are all accompanied by empirical justifications.
3.3.3. Examples of hierarchy in Trubetzkoy
One might conclude from the above examples that our earlier interpretation of
Trubetzkoy’s theory of contrast is simply wrong. Nevertheless, I do not believe
that this position can be consistently maintained. For one thing, the notion of
‘relevant contrast’ is central to Trubetzkoy’s entire exposition. If, as he writes in
connection with the d ~ n opposition, oppositions must normally be established
using only contrastive features, the implication is that the contrastive status of a
5 We will see below that Trubetzkoy argues that occlusion does not play any contrastive role in
French; rather, he argues that stops and fricatives are distinguished by place, not manner.
76