Linguist Forum
Specializations => Phonetics and Phonology => Topic started by: zaba on April 28, 2014, 05:46:42 AM
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Is it correct to describe the features of the minimal three-way division betwixt vowels this way? Sorry, but I have little formal training and am something of an imbecile:
/a/ [-high (+back)],
/i/ [+high (+front)]
/u/ [+high (-front)]
Thanks
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Looks good to me. Although, since /a/ doesn't have a front equivalent you probably don't need +back for it.
/i/ [+high +front]
/u/ [+high −front]
/a/ [−high]
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/a/ is a bit tough since it's typically one of few (or the only) vowel in that area. The symbol 'a' can represent a fairly wide variety of phonetic realizations, and its actual value is up to some interpretation. Many linguists consider it either a low front unrounded vowel or a low central unrounded vowel, its location(s) on the IPA chart reflects that as well.
With that said, I'd follow freknu's advice and omit any backness specification. The actual backness of /a/ varies from language to language, but the symbol unfortunately doesn't map to a discrete value as well as other vowels.
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It depends on the language! In some languages /a/ may vary with /ae/ or /e/ for backness. In others it may be best considered a front vowel.
So what is the full inventory of vowels for this language?
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Let's say hypothetically that it's the minimal inventory, a,i, u
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Let's say hypothetically that it's the minimal inventory, a,i, u
If that's your vowel inventory, there's no real reason to have [±back] in the first place if it doesn't provide a basis of contrast.
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so in that case,
/a/ [-high],
/i/ [+high (+front)]
/u/ [+high (-front)]
Is sufficient?
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so in that case,
/a/ [-high],
/i/ [+high (+front)]
/u/ [+high (-front)]
Is sufficient?
Yep.
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Isn't back more standard than front? Minor detail I admit.
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Isn't back more standard than front? Minor detail I admit.
According to the IPA /a/ is central or front and /ɑ/ is back.
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As a feature, I believe [+-back] is standard, not [+-front].
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As a feature, I believe [+-back] is standard, not [+-front].
Both [±back] and [±front] are used widely in phonological inventories, of course, often together. If a language has only horizontal contrast, which one gets used tends to depend on the phonetics.
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What I mean is that in the event that you only need a binary distinction, it is standard practice to use [±back], rather than [±front] when they are logically equivalent. I remember being told that a while ago. Obviously phonetics won't help in that case, because half of the vowels will be front and the others will be back. If you need more than a binary distinction, using both makes sense.
On the other hand, it's possible that the advice I received was biased for the analysis of English, but at the time my impression was that it was a more general practice.
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As a feature, I believe [+-back] is standard, not [+-front].
Ohhh, I misunderstood your question. I've generally seen [back] specified more frequently too. People seem to refer to that aspect as backness as well, rather than frontness.
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What I mean is that in the event that you only need a binary distinction, it is standard practice to use [±back], rather than [±front] when they are logically equivalent. I remember being told that a while ago. Obviously phonetics won't help in that case, because half of the vowels will be front and the others will be back. If you need more than a binary distinction, using both makes sense.
Well, except the distributional patterns never actually play out in such a tidy and idealized way. Articulation tends to maximize the available vowel space, but rarely along neatly symmetrical lines. Far more frequently, one side of a horizontal contrast will occupy a distinctly larger swatch of the continuum.
In other words, the standard practice is not to arbitrarily pick [±back] over [±front] a priori because it's more common in typology. The standard practice is to use the one that fits the empirical data, which needn't necessarily be [±back] in any given case.
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Can you give an example of both? Are you saying you'd pick the feature that is most likely to be positive? Or the one that is most likely to be negative?
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The convention is to use the label of the "marked" feature. What exactly that means varies from theory to theory, of course, but at minimum it implies some kind of (usually phonotactic though at least perceptual) salience. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "most likely" to be positive or negative. Are you talking about corpus frequency distributions? That's not really a mainstream analysis.
As far as examples go, I'd have to look them up. Off the top of my head, I believe several of the Athabaskan languages with small vowel inventories use a binary distinction with [front] marked.
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Thanks. I hadn't come across it that way before.
Of course it seems a bit odd to me to claim one is marked and that the other is not, but maybe there are complex reasons for this.
As for "most likely" I was referring to the distribution of vowels-- maybe 3 are back and 2 are front.