[sharp]

Counterpart

[plain]

Feature System

Definition

Sharp sounds have a “slight rise of the second formant, and, to some degree, also of higher formants” (Jakobson, Fant, & Halle 1952: 31). The production of the sound involves a reduction in the oral cavity “by raising a part of the tongue against the palate” (palatalization). It is accompanied by pharyngeal dilation.

Purpose

The feature sharp was used to contrast Russian palatalized (vs. unpalatalized/velarized) sounds. For example, [sharp] / tʲ/ in /matʲ/ ‘to rumple’ vs. [plain] /t/ in /mat/ ‘rumpled’.

History

The feature was first introduced by Jakobson, Fant, & Halle (1952:31) as one of several tonality features, along with [grave], [acute], and [sharp]. Tonality features are one type of resonance feature. [flat] has its origin as a term in music, and JFH employ the musical flat symbol ♭ in several of their examples.

The definition of [sharp] was rewritten in 1956 as “characterized by an upward shift of some of their upper frequency components” and made “genetically” (articulatorily) with widened slit and “a dialected pharyngeal pass, i.e. a widened back orifice of the mouth resonator” (1956:31-32). Their 1957 revision added “an upward shift or strengthening of some of their upper frequency components” and further clarification on the palatalization and compartmenting of the oral cavity (1957:235). Their (1968) definition is much the same. Fischer-Jørgensen (1975:162) finds it odd that Jakobson and Halle emphasize the dilation of the pharynx in the pharynx when the higher frequency components are the primarily triggered by the raising of the front part of the tongue to the high palate.

Halle (1959) naturally used [sharp] in his analysis of Russian. Fant (1967) uses [sharp] (and continues to in 1983). Harms (1968) carries [sharp] into a phonology textbook, applying it to Thai /c, cʰ, j/ (1968:20) and he also cites McCawley’s (1965) use of [sharp] for /j/ in Japanese glides.

With McCawley’s (1967) withering critique of the feature [flat], it seems [sharp] similarly rapidly fell out of use. Since Chomsky & Halle (1968) moved away from the acoustic definitions of Jakobsonian features, [sharp] was replaced by a tongue-height feature [+high] and tongue body feature [-back], along with the innovative place feature [coronal] to characterize palatal and palatalized consonants.

References

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

Fant, Gunnar. 1967. The nature of distinctive features. To honor Roman Jakobson: Essays on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, 634-642. Mouton: The Hague.

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.

Jakobson, Roman. 1949. On the identification of phonemic entities. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague5.205-213. Reprinted in 1962 in Selected writings: Vol. 1: Phonological studies, ed. by Roman Jakobson, 418-425. ’S-Gravenhage: Mouton.

Jakobson, Roman. 1962. Phonemic notes on standard Slovak. Selected writings, vol. I: Phonological studies, ed. by Roman Jakobson, 221-230. ‘S-Gravenhage: Mouton.

Jakobson, Roman, Gunnar Fant & Morris Halle. 1952. Preliminaries to speech analysis: the distinctive features and their correlates. (MIT Acoustic Laboratory Technical Report 13). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Jakobson, Roman; and Morris Halle. 1956. Phonology and phonetics. Fundamentals of Language, by Roman Jakobson, and Morris Halle, 1-51. 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.

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.

McCawley, James D. 1965. The accentual system of Standard Japanese. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.

McCawley, James D. 1967. Le rôle d’un système de traits phonologiques dans une théorie du langage. Languages 8, 112-123. English version: The role of a phonological feature system in a theory of language in Phonological theory: Evolution and current practice, ed. by Valerie Becker Makkai, 522-528. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1972.

Author

Paul D. Fallon