Distinctive Features - Speech Resource Pages - Macquarie University
Distinctive Features - Speech Resource Pages - Macquarie University
Distinctive Features - Speech Resource Pages - Macquarie University
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have argued: for example [f] and [x] are related acoustically but not articulatorily<br />
and they participated in the sound change by which the pronunciation of 'gh'<br />
spellings in English changed from a velar to a labiodental fricative e.g. 'laugh',<br />
[lɑx]→[lɑf]).<br />
Many of the features are defined loosely in phonetic terms. This is perhaps to be<br />
expected. Phonology has established highly abstract representations to explain<br />
sound alternations (i.e. to factor out what are considered redundant or<br />
predictable aspects of a word's pronunciation) and this abstraction is partly<br />
opposed to the principle in phonetics of describing in articulatory and acoustic<br />
terms the characteristics of speech sound production that are shared by<br />
linguistic communities. Nevertheless, if phonology is to be related to how words<br />
are actually pronounced, the features are required to have at least some<br />
phonetic basis to them.<br />
e) An overview of commonly used distinctive features<br />
The features described in Halle & Clements (1983) have been commonly used in<br />
the phonology literature in their analyses of the sound patterns of various<br />
languages. They incorporate many insights of the original features devised by<br />
Jakobson (1941) but are mostly based on those of the Sound Pattern of English,<br />
taking into account some modifications suggested by Halle & Stevens (1971).<br />
Most of these are also discussed below.<br />
i. Major class features<br />
Four features [syll], [cons], [son], [cont] (syllabic, consonantal, sonorant,<br />
continuant) are used to divide up speech sounds into major classes, as follows.<br />
Note that [syll] means "syllabic" (syllable nucleus), [cons] means "consonantal",<br />
[son] means "sonorant" (periodic low frequency energy), [cont] means<br />
"continuant" (continuous airflow through oral cavity), and [delrel] means delayed<br />
release (release is not "delayed", but there is a longer aspiration phase than oral<br />
stops - nb. voice onset is what's actually delayed).<br />
syll cons son cont delrel<br />
vowels + - + + 0<br />
oral stops - + - - -<br />
affricates - + - - +<br />
nasal<br />
stops<br />
- + + - 0<br />
fricatives - + - + 0<br />
liquids - + + + 0<br />
semivowels<br />
- - + + 0<br />
Note that the approximants have been divided into liquids (eg. in English /r, l/)<br />
and semi-vowels (eg. in English /w, j/). In this, and most other distinctive feature<br />
sets derived from Chomsky and Halle. Semi-vowels (being [-syll, -cons]) form a<br />
class of sounds intermediate between vowels ([+syll]) and consonants ([+cons]).<br />
The approximants can be defined as a class by the features [-syll, +son, +cont]<br />
and can be further sub-divided into liquids and semi-vowels using the [cons]<br />
feature. Note that "0" means irrelevant feature for these classes of sounds<br />
(there's nothing to release).<br />
We also have a feature [nasal] which, as its name suggests, separates nasal from<br />
oral sounds. In the above table, [nasal] would have been redundant as the nasal