Preface

Phonological Markedness and Distinctive Features advances a set of articulatory primes, distinctive features, which differ from those in use among MIT or Jakobsonian phonologists as well as from those advocated over the last decade by Ladefoged (see Ladefoged, 1980). They are similar to Ladefoged’s in that they are strictly articulatory, but they differ from all previously postulated sets of distinctive features because they are based on a set of a priori semiotic principles aimed at establishing the distinctive value (markedness) of a particular sound quality or articulatory gesture. I hope that my colleagues in phonology will recognize this set as both better phonetics and better phonology than any previous approach to the distinctive parameters used to distinguish the phonemes of human languages.

The exigencies of an academic career and teaching assignments in general linguistics, phonology, and the structures of Spanish and Portuguese have given me the task of conveying the knowledge of researchers such as Kenneth Pike, Charles Hockett, N. S. Trubetzkoy, Roman Jakobson, Morris Halle, Noam Chomsky, James Harris, Steven Anderson, J. C. Catford, Peter Ladefoged, and David Abercrombie to my students. In my teaching I have come to evaluate and modify their ideas and approaches as well as to adapt them to my own needs. This essay attempts to synthesize several different approaches to phonological description. It incorporates principles of phonemic analysis from American and Praguean structuralism, primarily their criteria for bestowing phonemic status on a particular segment in a particular system. It aims for the generality of generative phonology, and it seeks a phonetic accuracy similar to that advocated by Catford and Ladefoged. Beyond this, however, it suggests an interpretation of articulatory gestures and of sound systems but the interpretation is contained in the distinctive feature inventory itself.

Of course a work such as this would be unthinkable without the work of the researchers mentioned above and of many others not mentioned. In addition to the inspiration that I have received from the literature on phonetics and phonology, direct contact with scholars such as Lyle Campbell, Henning Andersen, Ronald Walton, Marianne Methuen, Steven Davis, and Rich Rhodes had helped me perservere at this task. I thank Ellen Kaisse, J. C. Catford, Ken Hill, John Goldsmith, and Ernst Pulgram both for the inspiration they have provided and for having read and criticized earlier versions of the manuscript. I am also extremely grateful to Pam Post who has twice shouldered the burden of typing it. I shall owe much of any felicity or success of this text to my critics and typist; however, I alone am responsible for its deviation from the norms of phonological description and I alone am responsible for whatever are its shortcomings. Vale.