CONTRIBUTION OF JACOBSON, CHOMSKY AND HALLE TOWARDS DISTINCTIVE FEATURES

Roman Jakobson was also a member of the Prague school of linguistics and worked closely with
Trubetzkoy. Distinctive feature theory, based on his own work and the work of Trubetzkoy, was first
formalised by Roman Jakobson in 1941 and remains one of the most significant contributions to
phonology. Briefly, Jakobson's original formulation of distinctive feature theory was based on the
following ideas:-

1. All features are privative (ie. binary). This means that a phoneme either has the feature eg. [+VOICE]
or it doesn't have the feature eg. [-VOICE].

2. There is a difference between PHONETIC and PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES.

3. Distinctive Features are Phonological Features.

4. Phonetics Features are surface realisations of underlying Phonological Features.

5. A phonological feature may be realised by more than one phonetic feature, eg. [flat] is realised by
labialisation, velarisation and pharyngealisation

6. A small set of features is able to differentiate between the phonemes of any single language

Distinctive features may be defined in terms of articulatory or acoustic features, but Jakobson's features
are primarily based on acoustic descriptions. Jakobson and colleagues (Jakobson, Fant and Halle, 1952,
Jakobson and Halle, 1956) devised a set of 13 distinctive features. They are not reproduced here, but
they represent a starting point for the set defined by Chomsky and Halle.

BRIEF ORIGIN OF DISTINCTIVE FEATURE

Distinctive feature theory was first formalised by Roman Jakobson in 1941. There have been numerous
refinements to Jakobson's (1941) set of features, most notably with the development of Generative
Phonology and the publication of Chomsky & Halle's (1968) Sound Pattern of English but also from
phoneticians such as Ladefoged (1971), Fant (1973) and also Stevens (Halle & Stevens, 1971).

In recent years, there have also been proposals that features should themselves be hierarchically
structured and arranged on separate levels or tiers (e.g. Clements & Keyser, 1983) which is consistent
with the developments in autosegmental phonology since the publication of the Sound Pattern of
English.

SIMILARITIES OF ALL THREE CONTRIBUTIONS

Regardless of the many differences and controversies, the various kinds of feature systems share the
following characteristics.

a) Features establish natural classes

Using distinctive features, phonemes are broken down into smaller components. For example, a nasal
phoneme /m/ might be represented as a feature matrix [+ sonorant, -continuant, +voice, +nasal, +labial]
(nb. you will often see the features of the matrices arranged in columns in phonology books -- this is
exactly equivalent to the 'horizontal' representation used here). By representing /m/ in this way, we are
saying both something about its phonetic characteristics (it's a sonorant because, like vowels, its
acoustic waveform has low frequency periodic energy; it's a non-continuant because the airflow is
totally interrupted in the oral cavity etc.), but also importantly, the aim is to choose distinctive features
that establish natural classes of phonemes. For example, since all the other nasal consonants and
nasalised vowels (if a language has them) have feature matrices that are defined as [+nasal], we can
refer to all these segments in a single simple phonological by making the rule apply to [+nasal]
segments. Similarly, if we want our rules to refer to all the approximants and high vowels, we might
define this natural class by [+sonorant, +high].

The advantage of this approach is readily apparent in writing phonological rules. For example, we might
want a rule which makes approximants voiceless when they follow aspirated stops in English. If we could
not define phonemes in terms of distinctive features, we would have to have separate rules, such as [l]
becomes voiceless after /k/ ('claim'), /r/ becomes voiceless after /k/ ('cry'), /w/ becomes voiceless
after /k/ ('quite'), /j/ becomes voiceless after /k/ ('cute'), and then the same again for all the
approximants that can follow /p/ and /t/. If we define phonemes as bundles of features, we can state
the rule more succinctly as e.g. [+sonorant, -syllabic, +continuant] sounds (i.e. all approximants) become
[+spread glottis] (aspirated) after sounds which are [+spread glottis] (aspirated).

If the features are well chosen, it should be possible to refer to natural classes of phonemes with a small
number of features. For example, [p t k] form a natural class of voiceless stops in most languages: we
can often refer to these and no others with just two features, [-continuant, -voiced]. On the other hand,
[m] and [d] are a much less natural class (ie. few sound changes and few, if any, phonological rules,
apply to them both and appropriately it is impossible in most feature systems to refer to these sounds
and no others in a single feature matrix).

b) Economy

In phonology, and particularly in Generative Phonology, we are often concerned to eliminate

redundancy from the sound pattern of a language or to explain it by rule. Distinctive features allow the
possibility of writing rules using a considerably smaller number of units than the phonemes of a
language. Consider for example, a hypothetical language that has 12 consonant and 3 vowel phonemes:

We could refer to all these phonemes with perhaps just 6 distinctive features - a reduction of over half
the number of phoneme units which also allows natural classes to be established amongst them:

At the same time, each phoneme is uniquely represented, as shown by the distinctive feature matrix:
c) Binarity

We have assumed that features are binary (a segment is either nasal or it is not) following Jakobson's
(1941) original formulation of distinctive feature theory and this premise was adopted in Chomsky &
Halle's (1968) Sound Pattern of English. There were many reasons why Jakobson (1941) advocated a
binary approach. Firstly, as we have seen, this is the most efficient way of reducing the phoneme
inventory of a language. Secondly, he argued that most phonological oppositions are binary in nature
(e.g. sounds either are or are not produced with a lowered soft-palate and nasalisation) and he even
proposed that it has a physiological basis i.e. that nerve fibers have an 'all-or-none' response. But the
binary principal is certainly not adopted by all linguists, and many phoneticians in particular have argued
that some features should be n-ary (where "n" is any relevant number of degrees or levels - see for
example, Ladefoged's 1993 treatment of vowel height which is 4-valued to reflect the distinction
between close, half-close, half-open, and open vowels).

d) Phonetic interpretation

According to Jakobson (1941), the distinctive features should have definable articulatory and acoustic
correlates. For example, [+nasal] implies a lowering of the soft-palate and also an increase in the ratio of
energy in the low to the high part of the spectrum. Chomsky & Halle (1968) abandoned the acoustic
definitions of phonological features (inappropriately, as Ladefoged, 1971 and many others have argued:
for example [f] and [x] are related acoustically but not articulatorily and they participated in the sound
change by which the pronunciation of 'gh' spellings in English changed from a velar to a labiodental
fricative e.g. 'laugh', [lɑx]→[lɑf]).

Many of the features are defined loosely in phonetic terms. This is perhaps to be expected. Phonology
has established highly abstract representations to explain sound alternations (i.e. to factor out what are
considered redundant or predictable aspects of a word's pronunciation) and this abstraction is partly
opposed to the principle in phonetics of describing in articulatory and acoustic terms the characteristics
of speech sound production that are shared by linguistic communities. Nevertheless, if phonology is to
be related to how words are actually pronounced, the features are required to have at least some
phonetic basis to them.

e) An overview of commonly used distinctive features

The features described in Halle & Clements (1983) have been commonly used in the phonology
literature in their analyses of the sound patterns of various languages. They incorporate many insights of
the original features devised by Jakobson (1941) but are mostly based on those of the Sound Pattern of
English, taking into account some modifications suggested by Halle & Stevens (1971).

Chomsky–Halle features

Some of the binary features proposed by Chomsky and Halle are listed in the table below. The first
group comprises major class features, because these features are required for dividing sounds into
classes sch as vowels, consonants, and semivowels. There are several problems in giving satisfactory
definitions of the phonetic properties of these features, but there is no doubt that binary oppositions of
this kind are needed for describing phonological patterns.

Most of these are also discussed below.

i. Major class features:

Four features [syll], [cons], [son], [cont] (syllabic, consonantal, sonorant, continuant) are used to divide
up speech sounds into major classes, as follows. Note that [syll] means "syllabic" (syllable nucleus),
[cons] means "consonantal", [son] means "sonorant" (periodic low frequency energy), [cont] means
"continuant" (continuous airflow through oral cavity), and [delrel] means delayed release (release is not
"delayed", but there is a longer aspiration phase than oral stops - nb. voice onset is what's actually
delayed).

Note that the approximants have been divided into liquids (eg. in English /r, l/) and semi-vowels (eg. in
English /w, j/). In this, and most other distinctive feature sets derived from Chomsky and Halle. Semi-
vowels (being [-syll, -cons]) form a class of sounds intermediate between vowels ([+syll]) and consonants
([+cons]). The approximants can be defined as a class by the features [-syll, +son, +cont] and can be
further sub-divided into liquids and semi-vowels using the [cons] feature. Note that "0" means irrelevant
feature for these classes of sounds (there's nothing to release).

We also have a feature [nasal] which, as its name suggests, separates nasal from oral sounds. In the
above table, [nasal] would have been redundant as the nasal stops are already defined uniquely as [-syll,
+cons, +son, -cont] (ie. as sonorant stops). However. the feature [nasal] is required to define nasal stops,
nasalised vowels and nasalised approximants as a single natural class.

ii. Source features

These are related to the source (vocal fold vibration that sustains voiced sounds or a turbulent airstream
that sustains many voiceless sounds).

The feature [voice] is self-explanatory (with or without vocal fold vibration). The feature [spread glottis]
is used to distinguish aspirated from unaspirated stops (aspirated stops are initially produced with the
vocal folds drawn apart). We can therefore make the following distinctions:
The [strident] feature is used by Halle and Clements for those fricatives produced with high-intensity
fricative noise: supposedly labiodentals, alveolars, palato-alveolars, and uvulars are [+strident]. There
seems to be little acoustic phonetic basis to the claim that labiodentals and alveolars pattern acoustically
(as opposed to dentals). In this course, we will use Ladefoged's feature [sibilant] which is defined by
Ladefoged (1971) in acoustic terms as including those fricatives with 'large amounts of acoustic energy
at high frequencies' i.e. [s ʃ z ʒ]. The English affricates would therefore also be [+sibilant].

III. The manner of articulation features

This includes continuant/noncontinuant (in which noncontinuant is exactly equivalent to the notion of
stop as defined above), and delayed release (the comparatively slow parting of the articulators that
occurs in an affricate). The source features refer to the action of the vocal cords (voice) or to fricative
noise mechanisms (strident).

Iv. The cavity features

This include nasal and lateral, which are used in the same sense as they were in the section on
articulatory phonetics, and the features that determine the place of articulation of consonants and the
quality of vowels. The most important features specifying the place of articulation of consonants are
anterior, made in the front of the mouth, and coronal, made with the tip or blade of the tongue raised
toward the teeth or teeth ridge. These two features can be used to specify four places of articulation:
bilabial (+anterior, −coronal); dental, or alveolar (+anterior, +coronal); postalveolar, or palato-alveolar
(−anterior, +coronal); velar (−anterior, −coronal). There is still some disagreement concerning whether
consonantal places of articulation are specified appropriately by binary oppositions of this kind.