[interrupted]

Counterpart

Feature System

Definition

Sounds that are considered [interrupted] have an abrupt onset and are characterized by a “sharp wave front preceded by a period of complete silence, for which, under certain conditions, a mere vibration of the vocal bands may be substituted.” Jakobson, Fant, and Halle (1952:21) state that [interrupted] sounds can also have one interruption (flap) or multiple, recurrent interruptions (trill).

Purpose

The feature [interrupted] was introduced to distinguish stops from fricatives and the [continuant] liquid [l] from interrupted liquid [r].

History

In 1949, Jakobson and Lotz introduced the opposition [continuous]/[intercepted]. The [intercepted] phonemes are characterized as phonemes that “include a complete obstruction of the passageway” in production (Jakobson & Lotz 1949:430). The feature [intercepted] is not used again.

Cherry, Halle, and Jakobson (1953), present the idea that identifying distinctive features “may be regarded as questions to be answered yes or no.” They use [continuant] as the feature, and the presence of it is marked as [+continuant] and the absence of it would be marked as [-continuant], instead of [interrupted] (Cherry et al. 1953:37).

Jakobson, Fant, and Halle (1952) introduce [interrupted] in opposition to [continuant], and it describes stops, trills, and flaps. Jakobson, Fant, and Halle note that this opposition is found in most languages, and that there are usually significantly more [interrupted] sounds than [continuant] sounds. They also note that in a great number of East Asian languages, liquids are not divided into [interrupted] and [continuant]. The liquid phoneme can be represented by either [r] or [l] (Jakobson, Fant, & Halle 1952:21-22).

Jakobson and Halle (1971) refer to the opposite of [continuant] as [abrupt]. Other works, such as Halle (1962), use [-continuant] in favor of [interrupted].

Jakobson and Halle conceive [continuant] in opposition to [noncontinuant]/[stop]. [interrupted] is omitted as a feature, but interruption in the trilled [r] is noted. Despite this, the trilled [r] is ultimately declared a [continuant] sound, and they note that “the trill is thus a secondary effect of narrowing the cavity without actually blocking the flow of air” (Chomsky & Halle 1968:317-318).

Today, [interrupted] is understood as [-continuant].

References

Cherry, E. Colin; Morris Halle; and Roman Jakobson. 1953. Toward the logical description of languages in their phonemic aspect. Language 29.34-46.

Chomsky, Noam; and Morris Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row.

Halle, Morris. 1962. Phonology in generative grammar. Word 18.54-72.

Jakobson, Roman; and John Lotz. 1949. Notes on the French phonemic pattern. Word 5.151-158. Reprinted in 1962 in Selected writings: Vol. 1: Phonological studies, ed. by Roman Jakobson, 426-434. ’S-Gravenhage: Mouton.

Jakobson, Roman; Gunnar Fant; and Morris Halle. 1952. Preliminaries to speech analysis: The distinctive features and their correlates. (MIT Acoustic Laboratory Technical Report 13). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jakobson, Roman; and Morris Halle. 1971. Fundamentals of language, 2^nd revised edn. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Author

Ainsley Graf