Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

Distinctive features
INTRODUCTION
Distinctive features have their origin in the theory of phonological oppositions developed
by the Prague School (see Trubetzkoy, 1939). In this theory, words of a language are
differentiated by oppositions between phonemes, and the phonemes themselves are kept
apart by their distinctive features—phonetic properties such as ‘voice’, ‘nasality’, etc.
These features are grouped phonetically into a variety of types, and the oppositions
between the phonemes are also classified ‘logically’ in a number of different ways,
according to the nature of the features concerned (see further FUNCTIONAL
PHONOLOGY and PHONEMICS).
The theory of distinctive features was elaborated and radically transformed by Roman
Jakobson (1896–1982), especially in the 1940s. For classical Prague School theory,
features were merely dimensions along which oppositions between phonemes may be
classified; Jakobson made the features themselves, rather than indivisible phonemes, the
basic units of phonology, and further developed the theory of their nature and role,
attempting to make it simpler, more rigorous and more general.
THE ACOUSTIC CHARACTER OF FEATURES
Unlike the majority of phonological theories, which have taken articulatory parameters as
the basis for phonetic description, Jakobson’s theory characterizes features primarily in
acoustic or auditory terms. The motivation for this is to be found in the act of
communication which, according to Jakobson, depends on the possession of a common
linguistic code by both speaker and hearer, and this can only be found in the sound which
passes between them, rather than in the articulation of the speaker. Jakobson collaborated
with the Swedish acoustic phonetician Gunnar Fant in the investigation of acoustic
aspects of oppositions (cf. Jakobson et al. 1951), using the recently developed sound
spectrograph, and was thus able to devise a set of acoustic or auditory labels for features,
such as ‘grave’, ‘strident’, ‘flat’, etc., each defined primarily in terms of its acoustic
properties, and only secondarily in terms of the articulatory mechanisms involved.
The use of acoustic features allows a number of generalizations which are more
difficult to achieve in articulatory terms (see ARTICULATORY PHONETICS). The
same set of features may be used for consonants and for vowels; for example, back and
front vowels are distinguished by the same feature, ‘grave’ v. ‘acute’, as velar and palatal
consonants. The same feature ‘grave’ may be used to group together labial and velar
consonants on account of their ‘dark’ quality and oppose them to both dentals and
palatals.