[nonback]
Counterpart
Feature System
Definition
The feature [nonback] describes phonemes that are articulated without the retraction of the tongue body from neutral position (Chomsky & Halle 1968:305).
Purpose
The feature [nonback] helps “characterize the placement of the body of the tongue” (Chomsky & Halle 1968:304). This feature separates uvulars and pharyngeals from other segments, and it describes central and back vowels apart from front vowels.
History
Chomsky and Halle (1968) introduced the feature [nonback] to describe tongue body placement alongside [back], [high], and [low]. They label palatals as [-back] and velars, uvulars, and pharyngeals as [+back] (Chomsky & Halle 1968:304-305).
Phonemes that have the properties of [nonback] are now generally conceptualized as [-back], with front vowels being [-back] and central and back vowels being [+back].
References
Chomsky, Noam; and Morris Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row.
Further Reading
Morén-Duolljá, Bruce. 2011. Vowel place. The Blackwell companion to phonology, vol. 1: General issues and segmental phonology, ed. by Marc van Oostendorp et al., 440–464. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Author
Ainsley Graf