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Articulatory features for describing lexical distinctions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Peter Ladefoged
Peter Ladefoged*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Abstract

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).

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Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 83 , Issue 1 , March 2007 , pp. 161 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by the Linguistic Society of America

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