linguistic structures - Professor Binkert's Webpage - Oakland ...

(43) a. [+ANTERIOR] articulated in the front of the mouth (at or in front of the alveolar
ridge)
b. [–ANTERIOR] not articulated in the front of the mouth (behind the alveolar ridge)
c. [+CORONAL] articulated with the blade of the tongue (the portion immediately
behind the tip) raised from its neutral position
d. [–CORONAL] not articulated with the blade of the tongue (the portion
immediately behind the tip) raised from its neutral position
With these two features, we describe nasals much more efficiently as follows, reaching a higher
level of descriptive adequacy than (42), which requires four features:
(44) a. [m] [+ANTERIOR, –CORONAL]
b. [n] [+ANTERIOR, +CORONAL]
c. [ñ] [–ANTERIOR, +CORONAL]
d. [õ] [–ANTERIOR, –CORONAL]
These sounds do not have equal frequency or distribution in English. The closest approximation to
a palatal nasal in English occurs in a word like onion. The velar nasal, though it can occur medially
and finally, cannot occur initially. The three primary positions in (44), namely, (44a), (44b), and
(44d), are also the positions for the six stop consonants in English. Consider the following (recall
that [+VOICED] means that the vocal cords are vibrating and [–VOICED] means they are not):
(45) a. [p] [+ANTERIOR, –CORONAL, –VOICED]
[b] [+ANTERIOR, –CORONAL, +VOICED]
b. [t] [+ANTERIOR, +CORONAL, –VOICED]
[d] [+ANTERIOR, +CORONAL, +VOICED]
c. [k] [–ANTERIOR, –CORONAL, –VOICED]
[g] [–ANTERIOR, –CORONAL, +VOICED]
Notice the succinctness of this method of characterization. As we noted in previous sections, a letter
like p is a representation for the sound [p], which itself is an abbreviation for a constellation of
phonological features. Further, all those features relate to the structure of the human vocal apparatus
so that they comprise natural classes of sounds. As it turns out, it is precisely those natural classes
that are operative in phonological processes. For example, consider the following words:
(46) a. impossible, imbalance, immeasurable
b. intangible, indiscrete, innumerable
c. incongruent, ingratitude
Observe that the prefix meaning ‘not’ is pronounced in three ways:
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