[high]

Counterpart

[nonhigh] / [-high]

Feature System

Definition

The feature [+high] describes phones produced with a raising of the tongue body above the level that it maintains in the neutral position, which is raised and fronted. Sounds that are [-high] or nonhigh exhibit no such raising. Sounds cannot be [+high] and [+low] simultaneously because the tongue cannot be lowered and raised in unison (Chomsky & Halle 1968:304).

Purpose

The feature [high] aims to “characterize the placement of the body of the tongue” in the oral cavity (Chomsky & Halle 1968:304). Among vowels, it distinguishes high vowels from mid and low vowels, such as /i/ and /e/ in the English minimal pair weed and wed. Furthermore, [high] characterizes palatal and velar sounds, which involve a relatively high tongue position, in contrast to consonants articulated with a lower tongue body position.

Brazilian Portuguese distinguishes vowel height in word-final position by raising /e, o/ to [i, u] in word-final position (Mateus & Pardal 2000). For example, /ˈlejtʃe/ → [ˈlejtʃi] ‘milk’ exhibits raising of word-final vowel, which can be described by the rule [-high] → [+high] / __#.

History

Jakobsonian features employed [grave], [compact] and [diffuse] to describe both vowels and consonants. The feature [diffuse] described vowels and consonants in regard to height and anteriority, but also aided in distinguishing [+high] palatals and velars from [-high] uvulars and pharyngeals. Chomsky and Halle (1968) considered this too radical an approach, and thus introduced the distinctive feature [high] to describe tongue body placement in place of [diffuse] (Chomsky & Halle 1968:306-307).

Cognominally, [high] can refer to a distinctive feature regarding tone in which a segment’s pitch is meaningfully raised from the speaker’s base pitch/vocal tone and surrounding syllables. See [high tone].

References

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

Mateus, Maria Helena Mira, and Ernesto d’Andrade Pardal. 2000. The Phonology of Portuguese. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author

Allon Boettcher