Articulator-Free Features

Definition

Articulator-free features are those features that are not dependent upon the six major articulators, the anatomical structures involved in production of speech. The articulators include the glottis, the soft palate, the lips, tongue blade, tongue body, and tongue root (Halle 1992). The articulator-free features include [consonantal], [sonorant], [continuant], [strident], [lateral], and [suction].

Purpose

To distinguish the set of features which are not dependent upon a single articulator from those that are. The idea draws on the insight that the articulators play a fundamental role in the organization of phonological features within the segment. Halle (1992:211) notes the significance that six of the seven groups of articulators being actualized by a single articulator. This represents a convergence of two independent lines of inquiry: the study of the articulatory implementation of features and of the patterned behavior of features based on phonological rules.

History

Growing out of Halle (1983, 1988), Sagey (1986) and early models of feature geometry, Halle developed his Articulator-based feature theory, concisely presented in Halle (1992, 2003).

References

Clements, G.N.; and Elizabeth V. Hume. 1995. The internal organization of speech sounds. The handbook of phonological theory, ed. by John Goldsmith, 245-306. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 

Further Reading

Halle, Morris. 1983. On distinctive features and their articulatory implementation. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 1.91-105.

Halle, Morris. 1988. The immanent form of phonemes.  Giving birth to cognitive science: A Festschrift for George A. Miller, ed. by William Hurst, 167-183. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Halle, Morris. 1992. Phonological features. Oxford international encyclopedia of linguistics, vol. 3, ed. by William Bright, 207-212. New York: Oxford University Press.

Halle, Morris. 2003. Phonological features. Oxford international encyclopedia of linguistics, vol. 3, ed. by William Frawley, 314-320. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sagey, Elizabeth. 1986. The representation of features and relations in nonlinear phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation. Published in 1991 by Garland Press.

Author

Paul D. Fallon