ESL PHONOLOGY The defi

The definition and classification of distinctive features

Distinctive feature: "In phonology, a particular characteristic which distinguishes one distinctive sound unit of a language from another or one group of sounds from another group" (Richards, Platt & Platt, 1992, p. 114). The term refers to "a minimal contrastive unit recognized by some linguists as a means of explaining how the sound system of languages is organized. Distinctive features may be seen either as part of the definition of phoneme (Prague School) or as an alternative to the notion of the phoneme" (Crystal, 1991, p. 109). Distinctive phonological features--such as voicing, tongue-height, and lip rounding--are identified through "an analysis of vowels and consonants in terms of a set of additive components within a single phonetic framework" (Crystal, 1992, p. 300). Usually, features are grouped into four main classes, relating to places of articulation, types of stricture, the oral/nasal process, and laryngeal activity.

Examples of one phoneme (distinctive sound) from another: the presence of the feature voice distinguishing /b/ (as in bin) from /p/ (as in pin) and /d/ from /t/. The /b/ is a voiced stop, whereas the /p/ is a voiceless stop. Vowels and sounds such as /l/, /n/, and /m/, where the air passes relatively freely through the mouth and nose, have the feature [+sonorant], whereas sounds such as /p/, /k/, and /s/, where the air is stopped either completely

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ed that the distinctive features were identical for all languages: languages differed only through the way in which they combined these features into phonemes. Therefore, Japanese would be made up of phonological universals--even as every other languages. On the other hand, Martinet contended that a rigorous physical determination of the distinctive features was inherently impossible. The linguistic reality was simply the correlation between the way in which phonemes of one series (e.g. unvoiced) and those of the corresponding series (e.g. voiced) varied according to context. Consequently, the hypothesis of universal distinctive features was unacceptable; indeed, the distinctive features of a language could not be defined without reference to the different contexts of phoneme use in that language. With the coming into predominance of generative phonology, the picture took a further aspect. As Ducrot and Todorov (1972) remarked: "While refusing to take recourse to commutation, distributionalism used another method to try and find the same distinctive units that commutation had brought to light" (p. 174). Generative linguistics questioned the very importance of distinctiveness itself. The phonological component of a generative gr
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Ducrot Todorov, Jakobson Halle, Martinet Jakobson, Prague School, Chomsky Halle, Alphabet Using, Platt Platt, ESL PHONOLOGY, distinctive features, Press Martinet, distinctive feature, SociTtT Linguistique, jakobson halle, vocal tract, todorov 1972, ducrot todorov 1972, ducrot todorov, /b/ /d/ /g/, blackwell publishers, uk blackwell, chomsky halle 1968, hyman 1975, oxford uk, oxford uk blackwell, richards platt platt,
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