Re: THEORY: Feature geometry for uvulars/pharyngeals

Hi,

JS Bangs a écrit :
> Hey, linguists and well-read amateurs:
>
> I've been poking around for a while, and I'm really stymied trying to find
> out how to fit uvulars and pharyngeals into a feature geometric system.
> I've gotten a couple of fragmentary descriptions from here and there, but
> nothing very conclusive or helpful. The best I can get is that there's two
> possibilities:
>
> A privative feature [pharyngeal] under the Place node (but what about
> distinguishing uvulars from pharyngeals?).
You're right, it's a true problem.


 > A Guttural node that dominates Larynx (specifying voice,
 > spread/constricted glottis, etc) and Tongue Root, which somehow works to
 > specify ATR and pharyngeality.

This is the way Halle represents laryngeals.


There is an excellent article about feature geometry in _The Handbook of
Phonological Theory_, edited by
John Goldsmith. This article is _Internal Organization of Speech Sounds_
by Clements and Hume. Clements is the first
one who proposed geometric representations (1985 I think, but not
absolutely sure). They present another way
to do it, wich is an idea of McCarthy. Instead of having a place node
dominating [labial], [coronal], [dorsal], and
[pharyngeal], he proposes that Place dominates  an oral node which it
the sister of the [pharyngeal] feature. The
oral node dominates [labial], [coronal], and [dorsal].

.....................PLACE
..................../........\
................../............\
................/................\
............ORAL........[pharyngeal]
.........../...|...\
..[labial]...|.....\
........[coronal]..\
................... [dorsal]


  The good point is that distinguishing pharyngeals from uvualars is
then straightforward : the former have just the [pharyngeal] feature,
while the latter have both [dorsal] and [pharyngeal]. Thus, pharyngeals
can be more transparent to phonological processes as they have no ORAL
feature. Maybe it could be what you need ?

I don't know whether it is of interest, but here is how I would do, in
an element-based framework : in elemental models, both uvulars and
pharyngeals have an element (or component, or unary feature, or
whatever) |A|. In uvulars, it is an operator
(just present in the segmental expression) while it is the head in
pharyngeals. Pharyngeals are somehow "more |A|" than uvulars. Example :
  [X] (uvular voiceless fricative) = |h, A| (friction and pharyngeality,
where friction is the most important) and [X\] (pharyngeal voiceless
fricative) = |A, h| (pharyngeality and friction, where pharyngeality is
the most important). My representation would be :
[X] = HEAD(h,(A,h)) and [X\] = HEAD(A,(A,h))
where HEAD(x,y) means : the element x is the head of the segment y, and
x belongs to y.

Best regards,

Julien.

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