Re: PHONO: feature theory (was: vowel harmony)

Jonathan Knibb:
> Question 1: in standard feature theory, is a phoneme uniquely
> associated with a particular set of features *no matter which language
> it's in*?
I'm not sure what counts as standard feature theory. I think the
pre-Generative answer would be No, but the Generative answer would
be Yes, but with languages differing in terms of which features had
to be specified in underlying representations and which were filled
in by redundancy rules.

> Question 1a: is it meaningful to speak of 'the same phoneme' cross-
> linguistically anyway?
Only to the extent that phonologies are remarkably similar across
languages. So, in principle, No. But in practise, Yes, Sort Of.

> Question 2: how do you decide which value of a feature is unmarked?
I don't know & am rather thankful I am not writing this in the residence
that contains my copy of SPE, else I would feel obliged to consult it.

> ObC - Telona's consonant inventory is ruthlessly feature-symmetrical,
> and I've had the devil's own job trying to get it to fit my personal
> aesthetic given this constraint. If I could make up my own features,
> it would make things a *lot* easier. :))
IMO you should make up your own features, describing your conlang on
its own terms. Some of the most interesting conlangs are those that
are systemically coherent but not analysable in terms of models
developed to handle the major natlangs.

--And.