[noncoronal]

Counterpart

Feature System

Definition

The feature [noncoronal] is used to describe sounds that are “produced with the blade of the tongue in the neutral position” (Chomsky & Halle 1968:304). Sounds produced with the tongue dorsum, rather than the tongue front (i.e., velars and uvulars), are also considered to be [noncoronal] (Hall 1997:4).

Purpose

The feature [noncoronal] creates the natural class of labials and velars (Hall 1997:4-5).

History

Jakobson and Lotz (1949) proposed the opposition [grave] vs. [acute]. The feature [grave] was characterized by the “pre-dominance in the lower formant, with a feebleness or a complete lack of higher components in the spectrum…[and] is due to an undivided and more extensive buccal resonator with contracted pharyngeal and labial orifices” (Jakobson & Lotz 1949:429). Later, Jakobson, Fant, & Halle (1952) describe the articulation of [grave] as being “generated by a larger and less comparted mouth cavity” (Jakobson et al. 1952:30).

When [grave]/[acute] is replaced by [coronal]/[noncoronal] by Chomsky and Halle (1968), they characterize [noncoronal] sounds as being “produced with the blade of the tongue in the neutral position” (Chomsky & Halle 1968:304).

Sagey (1986) argues that, in feature geometry, [coronal] falls under the articulator (place) node as one of three main features, with dependents of [anterior] and [distributed]. The feature [coronal] is now widely considered a privative feature. “In order to capture the natural class of labials and velars (i.e., the noncoronals) [Hall claims] that [labial] and [dorsal] are dominated by the privative feature [peripheral]” (Hall 1997:22). The general abolition of [noncoronal] is due to the evidence that any class of [noncoronal]/[-coronal] can be accounted for using other explanations.

References

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

Hall, T. Alan. 1997. Phonology of Coronals. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

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.

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

Author

Ainsley Graf