Jakobsonian Features
This feature system, the first formal use of distinctive features, was developed by Roman Jakobson, especially with his colleague Morris Halle, as well as others. It primarily used acoustic properties to develop a set of twelve main features, which were also defined in articulatory terms.
The first conception in print explored the sound system of French (Jakobson & Lotz 1949). There, only six paired features (explained below) were employed: Vocality vs. Consonantness, Nasality vs. Orality, Saturation vs. Diluteness, Gravity vs. Acuteness, Tenseness vs. Laxness, and Continuousness vs. Interception. This same set was used, though named only by the positive values of Vocality, Nasality, Saturation, Gravity, Continuousness, and Voicing in Jakobson’s (1949) analysis of Serbo-Croatian.
The first major presentation of distinctive features, Preliminaries to speech analysis: The distinctive features and their correlates, by Jakobson, Fant & Halle (1952), appeared in MIT Acoustics Laboratory Technical Report No. 13, and was more widely circulated in a revised second printing (1952) and later reprints. Preliminaries developed a “tentative survey” of features, supporting the framework in an “Addenda and Corrigenda” section replete with spectrograms and sagittal sections, which allowed readers to see the acoustic characteristics of sounds characterized by the various features. Preliminaries posits two main classes of features: inherent and prosodic. Prosodic features are briefly discussed and require reference to temporal sequence. Only one, length opposition, Long vs. Short, is offered, as in Czech /pravaː praːva/ ‘true rights’. (An Appendix listing the Preliminaries features is given at the end of this entry).
Inherent features, which describe the segmental content of phonemes, have three main sets of binary features: fundamental source features, secondary source features, and resonance features.
Fundamental source features correspond to what today are usually called major class features. They posited two: Vocalic/Nonvocalic and Consonantal/Nonconsonantal. The feature Vocalic applies to vowels, which bear no consonantal features. The feature Consonantal applies to consonants without vocalic properties. Liquids are complex segments bearing properties of both vowels and consonants.
Secondary consonantal source features are of three main types: two envelope features, a stridency feature, and a supplemental source feature for feature voicing. Envelope features refer to the “temporal envelope of speech intensity”, which can be smooth or rough. Smooth envelopes have either gradual onsets and decays, and are thus Continuant (fricatives), while phonemes with abrupt onsets are Interrupted, or discontinuous (stops and affricates). According to the decays, phonemes with an abrupt decay are Checked (glottalized stops, or ejectives, as well as glottal stop), and those with a gradual decay are Unchecked (pulmonic consonants).
Stridency, made with higher frequency, was realized by the feature Strident, opposed to non-strident Mellow sounds. The sounds /f, v, s, z, ʃ, t͡s/ are strident, while /ɸ, β, θ, ð, ç, t/ are their mellow counterparts. Sounds which received a supplemental source through vocal fold vibration are Voiced (e.g. /b, d, ɡ, v, z, ʒ/ while those without such vibration are Unvoiced (voiceless, e.g. /p, t, k, f, s, ʃ/.
Resonance features include Compact, three tonality features, Tense, and a supplemental resonator feature. Compact sounds are defined by the relation between volume in front of the narrowest stricture and volume behind the narrowest stricture, so that /ʃ, k, ɡ, ŋ/, along with low vowels, are compact, while Diffuse sounds, with lower ratios, are exemplified by /p, b, t, d, f, s, m, n/, along with high vowels.
The tonality features are Grave vs. Acute, Flat vs. Plain, and Sharp vs. Plain, which may interact with each other. Grave sounds are those on the lower side of the acoustic spectrum, typically labials, velars, and back vowels, while Acute sounds are coronals and front vowels. Flat sounds have a downward shift of a set of (or all) formants in the spectrum caused by reduction of lip rounding with lengthening of lip constriction. In their original conception, Jakobson, Fant & Halle (1952) believed Flat could cover both rounded (labialized) consonants and pharyngealized consonants. They also applied it to round vowels. In English, Flat was redundant and thus unspecified in consonants. Plain vowels are unrounded, and plain consonants are neither labialized nor pharyngealized. Sharp sounds are marked by a rise in the second formant and produced with raising part of the tongue against the palate, making palatalized sounds as in Russian /tʲ/, while plain sounds are unpalatalized.
Tense consonants are those that are strong (fortes), often associated with voiceless consonants /p, t, k, tʃ, f, s/; the opposite value is Lax, associated with weak (lenes), or voiced consonants like /b, d, ɡ, dʒ, v, z/. Tense/Lax oppositions are also applied to vowels, where Tense vowels are made with greater “distinctness” and pressure, and are longer in duration and whose formants show greater deviation from neutral position than those in Lax vowels. Conservative French pronunciations of pâte as /pat/ and patte as /pɑt/ (transcribed in Preliminaries as /ạ/ vs. /a/) are an example of Tense vs. Lax.
The final resonance feature essentially explores whether there is resonance in the nasal cavity through a lowering of the velopharyngeal port. Those sounds with nasal resonance are Nasal, as in /m, n, ŋ/ while those without nasal resonance are Oral, as in /b, d, ɡ/. Vowels may also be Nasal, as in /ɑ̃/ vs. Oral /ɑ/.
History
Excellent treatments of the historical development of Jakobsonian features may be found in Ivić (1965), Fischer-Jørgensen (1975), Baltaxe (1978), Anderson (2021), Battistella (2022), and Dresher & Hall (2022). Baltaxe (1978) in particular masterfully traces in depth the growth, interplay, and relation between Trubetkzoy’s thought and Jakobson’s in the Linguistic Circle of Prague. Trubetzkoy developed the idea of sets of oppositions in phonology, cataloguing them in detail, best exemplified in his magnum opus, published posthumously by Jakobson, Trubetzkoy (1939). However, Trubetzkoy resisted the view that all oppositions were binary, exemplified by vowel height and by place of articulation distinctions, both of which have three-way distinctions, which seem to rule out a binary system involving a single phonological feature.
As early as 1932, Jakobson defined the phoneme as “a set of those [concurrent] sound properties which are used in a given language to distinguish words of unlike meaning” (1932 [1962:231]. Qu (2018) notes that the word concurrent was added to the English translation by Jakobson (1962). Jakobson (1938) advocated for binarity of all distinctive features, and examined how place features could be broken into a set of binary features, though vowel features were not yet explored. Jakobson (1939) also focused on the distinctive properties of phonemes, “purely contrastive properties [that] cannot be broken down any further,” with oppositions of distinctive properties being seen in binary terms (translation of quoted material from Battistella 2022:226).
Jakobson (1951), a defense against American structuralist criticism of features, and a clear articulation of the goals of a featural analysis, forms an important bridge between the earlier sketches published in 1949, and the fuller treatment of features in Preliminaries.
In Jakobson, Fant & Halle (1952), the phoneme and its concurrent sound properties was conceived as a bundle of binary features and this work has been widely cited and reprinted many times.
The next development of features and their definitions was in Jakobson & Halle (1956), a collection of two essays, the first of which, “Phonology and Phonetics”, was revised several times (Jakobson & Halle 1957, 1968). Jakobson & Halle (1956:36) offer the following “newly-coined articulatory designations (which have not been adopted):
compact/diffuse forward-flanged/backward-flanged
strident/mellow rough-edged/smooth-edged
grave/acute peripheral/medial
flat/plain narrowed slit/wider slit
sharp/plain widened slit/narrower slit
Fischer-Jørgensen (1975:156-162) details the differences in feature definitions between Jakobson, Fant & Halle (1952) and Jakobson & Halle (1956). Halle (1964) provides concise definitions of a partial list of ten main binary features (not mentioned are Checked/Unchecked, and Tense/Lax) and Grave/Acute are later used but not defined). The feature Diffuse has its opposite value as Nondiffuse, while Compact, used only for vowels, has its opposite, Noncompact. McCawly (1967) is also insightful in the differing uses of features between Preliminaries and later generative (but pre-SPE) phonology.
Halle (1959, 1962) employed distinctive features into the growing theory of generative grammar (Chomsky 1957) and its detailed matrices of phonological rules.
Halle (1962:54) contains a footnote stating that The sound pattern of English (Chomsky & Halle 1968) was in preparation, though phonological work in the 1960s did not seem to adopt SPE features until it actually appeared. But once it did, Jakobsonian features were abandoned, especially by American scholars. Despite their major importance in the development of distinctive feature theory, Jakobsonian features lasted but two decades before they were replaced by a newer framework. With the exception of the fairly late Harms (1968), soon outdated by SPE, there was no phonology textbook that explained Jakobsonian features to the students in expanding graduate programs in the 1960s. Students had to access the most definitive statements of Jakobsonian features, Preliminaries and Fundamentals, both of which have been reprinted and which remain in print today, a testimony to their lasting impact on phonological theory.
Appendix: List of Features described in Preliminaries to speech analysis (Jakobson, Fant & Halle 1052)
Prosodic Features
Long vs. Short
Inherent Features
Fundamental Source Features
Vocalic vs. Non-Vocalic
Consonantal vs. Non-Consonantal
Secondary Consonantal Features
Envelope Features
Interrupted vs. Continuant
Checked vs. Unchecked
Strident vs. Mellow
Supplemental Source: Voiced vs. Unvoiced
Resonance Features
Compact vs. Diffuse
Tonality Features
Grave vs. Acute
Flat vs. Plain
Sharp vs. Plain
Tense vs. Lax
Supplementary Resonator: Nasal vs. Oral
References
Anderson, Stephen R. 2021. Phonology in the twentieth century: Second edition, revised and expanded. (History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences, 5). Berlin: Language Science Press.
Baltaxe, Christiane A.M. 1978. Foundations of distinctive feature theory. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.
Battistella, Edwin. 2022. The Prague School: Nikolai Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson. The Oxford history of phonology, ed. by B. Elan Dresher and Harry van der Hulst, 221-241. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton.
Dresher, B. Elan; and Daniel Currie Hall. 2022. Developments leading towards generative phonology. The Oxford history of phonology, ed. by B. Elan Dresher and Harry van der Hulst, 372-395. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fischer-Jørgensen, Eli. 1975. Trends in phonological theory: A historical introduction. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.
Halle, Morris. 1959. The sound pattern of Russian: A linguistic and acoustical investigation. The Hague: Mouton.
Halle, Morris. 1962. Phonology in generative grammar. Word 18.54-72.
Halle, Morris. 1964. On the bases of phonology. The structure of language, ed. by Jerry A. Fodor and Jerrold J. Katz, 324-333. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Harms, Robert T. 1968. Introduction to phonological theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Ivić, Pavle. 1965. Roman Jakobson and the growth of phonology. Linguistics 18.35-78.
Jakobson, Roman. 1932. Fonema. Ottův slovník naučným vol. 2, 608. Praha: Otto. Translated into English as “Phoneme and phonology” in Roman Jakobson, 1962, Selected writings I: Phonological studies, 231-233. The Hague: Mouton.
Jakobson, Roman. 1938. Observations sur les classement phonologique des consonnes. Presentation to the Cercle Linguistique de Prague, then the Troisième Congrès International des Sciences Phonétiques, Ghent, 1938 and published in 1939 in the Proceedings of the Third International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Ghent, 1938, ed. by E. Blacquaert and W. Pée, 34-41. Ghent: Laboratory of Phonetics of the University, 1939. Reprinted in Roman Jakobson, 1962, Selected writings I: Phonological studies, 272-279. The Hague: Mouton.
Jakobson, Roman. 1939. Zur Struktur des Phonems. Two lectures given at the University of Copenhagen in May 1939. First published in Roman Jakobson, 1962, Selected writings I: Phonological studies, 280-310. The Hague: Mouton.
Jakobson, Roman. 1941. Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze. Uppsala:. English version published as: Jakobson, Roman. 1968. Child language, aphasia, and phonological universals. The Hague: Mouton.
Jakobson, Roman. 1951. On the correct presentation of phonemic problems. Symposium 5:2.328-335. Reprinted as “For the correct presentation of phonemic problems” in Roman Jakobson, 1962, Selected writings I: Phonological studies, 435-442. The Hague: Mouton.
Jakobson, Roman; C. Gunnar M. Fant; and Morris Halle. 1952. Preliminaries to speech analysis: The distinctive features and their correlates. M.I.T. Acoustics Laboratory Technical report No. 13 (preface written in December 1952). 2nd revised edition, May 1952. 3rd. edn unchanged except for the addition of eight references, Sept. 1961, printed by MIT Press. 4th edn., unchanged except for the addition of the Supplement by Jakobson & Halle “Tenseness and Laxness”, Aug. 1963. 6th printing, 1965. 7th printing, 1967.
Jakobson, Roman; and Morris Halle. 1956. Fundamentals of Language. The Hague: Mouton.
Jakobson, Roman; and Morris Halle. 1957. Phonology in relation to phonetics. Manual of phonetics, ed. by L. Kaiser, 215-251. Amsterdam: North Holland.
Jakobson, Roman; and Morris Halle. 1968. Phonology in relation to phonetics. Manual of phonetics, ed. by Bertil Malmberg, 411-449. Amsterdam: North Holland.
McCawley, James D. 1967. Le role d’un système de traits phonologiques dans une théorie du langage. Langages 8.112-123. English version printed as The role of a phonological feature system in a theory of language. Phonological theory: Evolution and current practice, ed. by Valerie Becker Makkai, 522-528. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Qu, Chang-Liang. 2018. Linguistic and Extra-Linguistic History Behind Roman Jakobson’s Distinctive Feature: The Perspective of European Crises and Intellectual Odyssey. Interface 5. 99-117. doi: 10.6667/interface.5.2018.51
Trubetzkoy, Nikolai S. 1939. Grundzüge der Phonologie. Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague 7. Trans. 1969 by Christiane Baltaxe, Principles of phonology. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Paul D. Fallon