Articulatory Features for Describing Lexical Distinctions

The sounds that distinguish words in the world's languages can be described in terms of properties that are often called (distinctive) features. The best-known attempts to describe sounds in this way are the acoustic features of Jakobson, Fant, and Halle (1952) and the innate cognitive abilitie...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language (Baltimore) 2007-03, Vol.83 (1), p.161-180
Main Author: Ladefoged, Peter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustics
Articulation
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive ability
Descriptive studies and applied theories
Fricative consonants
Gestures
Glottal consonants
Hierarchy
Interdisciplinary research
Language
Language history
Lexicology
Linguistic research
Linguistics
Morphology
Phonetics
Physiology
Semantics
Syllables
Synthesizers
Theory
Tongue
Vowels
Words
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The sounds that distinguish words in the world's languages can be described in terms of properties that are often called (distinctive) features. The best-known attempts to describe sounds in this way are the acoustic features of Jakobson, Fant, and Halle (1952) and the innate cognitive abilities described by the feature theory of Chomsky and Halle (1968). This article provides a more comprehensive answer to the problem of specifying contrasting segments, but one that still leaves some questions open. It also considers the constraints on possible combinations of features, using a development of the notion of a feature hierarchy suggested by Clements (1985).
ISSN:0097-8507
1535-0665
1535-0665
DOI:10.1353/lan.2007.0026