Distinctive Feature Theory

• Introduction

• Classical Phonetics used the place-manner classification system for consonants and the high-low / front-back system for vowels. The main purpose here was clearly to enable the phonetician to specify how particular sounds were made with respect to their articulation. There was, however, an important spin-off from these systems: it became possible to use the features or parameters of the classification system to label whole sets of sounds or articulations. Thus we might refer to: 'the set of all plosives' (seven in English - which is the seventh?), or 'the set of all voiced plosives' (three in English), or 'the set of all voiced alveolar plosives' (one only in English) - and so on, cutting horizontally and vertically around the consonant matrix. Similarly, for vowels, 'the set of all front vowels', or 'the set of all rounded vowels', and so on.
  As a consequence of being able to label sets of sounds in this way it became possible to describe the behaviour of various sets. So, for example, it was possible to say that the set of voiced plosives devoice in word-final position or that all vowels lengthen before voiced plosives in the same syllable, and so on. So rules no longer had to be about the contextual behaviour of individual sounds - but in terms of how sets or classes of sounds behave. We now had the ability to capture and express generalisation - an important theoretical principle in linguistics: generalisations must be expressed whenever possible.
  It was not until Transformational Generative Grammar came along, though, that these generalisations became formalised in phonological theory. Morris Halle's 'Sound Pattern of Russian' [The Hague: Mouton, 1959] was really the first influential textbook in modern phonological theory (just two years after Noam Chomsky's 'Syntactic Structures' [The Hague: Mouton, 1957], the first influential textbook in modern syntactic theory). The Generative Phonologists adopted the theory of distinctive features from the earlier Prague School of Linguistics (see N.S. Trubetskoy Grundzüge der Phonologie , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht [1958] - appearing also in translation: Principes de Phonologie and Principles of Phonology) - a much more formal representation than that of the classical phoneticians.
  

  There is a good description of modern DF theory in the book: Understanding Phonology by C. Gussenhoven and H. Jacobs [London: Arnold, 1998], Chapter 5; and the landmark description in The Sound Pattern of English by N. Chomsky and M. Halle [New York: Harper and Row, 1968 and Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991], Chapter 7. The classic text on DF theory is R. Jakobson, G. Fant and M. Halle's Preliminaries to Speech Analysis [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1963].
  

• The use of distinctive features in phonology enables us to capture 'natural classes', and, by extension, to generalise regularly occurring phenomena and to formulate predictions about the behaviour of class members. If we wanted to hypothesise about human processing of phonology we would use this idea to suggest that human beings process the patterns of phonology as part of speech planning in terms of these classes rather than in terms of individual segments. The regularity of patterning in phonology is part of the evidence for this claim - but the claim is more solid when based on the evidence that when the users of a language make up new words they do so by producing utterances which obey the rules of the natural classes their sounds fall into.
  There have been various sets of distinctive features proposed as the parameters of segment description and classification. The original set appeared in Jakobson, Fant and Halle (see above), and consisted of around 14 features. Chomsky and Halle (see above) had around 45 features, explaining that they found the original set of 14 somewhat inappropriate for characterising some subtleties in phonology.
  Most modern phonologists argue (following JFH) for a binary system of indexing features: a segment either possesses or does not any one particular features. Clearly, with a binary system of indexing the maximum number of features needed to uniquely classify the sounds of a language like English (with around 45 phonemes) would be six, giving us 2⁶ or 64 segments. More would be needed to uniquely classify the sounds of all the languages of the world or indeed all possible human languages. Larger sets of features were chosen because it was felt that it was appropriate to sacrifice mathematical simplicity in favour of a feature labelling system which appeared to related these phonological features with the phonetic set of Classical Phonetics. Thus the meaning of the features became more transparent.
  These ideas are embodied in three principles surrounding the distinctive feature set:
  

  1. It should be able to characterise all contrasting segments in human languages;
  2. It should be able to capture natural classes in a clear fashion;
  3. It should be transparent with regard to phonetic correlates.

  • A claim inherent in the first principle is that the feature set somehow embodies the humanness, rather than the language-specific nature, of features. It is predicted that if this set is correctly specified no other features will be needed even for future languages, so long as human beings do not change how they make and handle language - that is, so long as human beings remain human.

  • The second principle refers to not just classes, but natural classes. The idea here is that the classes themselves reveal something of what is 'natural' in human language behaviour: once again referring to the fact that phonological processing is a human activity, and will therefore contain elements which are truly universal.

  • The third principle enables us to establish phonetic similarity - that is, to group sounds by feature which are phonetically similar. In the end there is a very good reason for doing this: it becomes possible to explain some phonological processes in terms of the behaviour of their phonetic correlates.

  The distinctive feature set most usually found is approximately that of M. Halle and G.N. Clements 'Problem Book in Phonology' [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983], which is based on the Chomsky and Halle set. You can read in detail about these features in the Gussenhoven and Jacobs book. Chomsky and Halle have a lengthy description of their own set.
  

• Redundancy

• Redundancy is an important aspect of phonology which is captured by the use of distinctive features. Consider for example the fact that all segments in English which are [+nasal] are also [+voice]. We could say that to specify [+voice] for segments like [m] and [n] is to fail to capture this redundancy. The main distinctive feature here is the nasality - the voicing is secondary and entirely predictable: all nasal consonants are voiced. [Remember we are talking abstract phonology, not phonetics.]
  Remember that one of our principles was to set up a system to capture all the segmental contrasts in the world's languages. Well, we can do that and show where there is no contrast: there is no contrast, nor possibility of contrast, where there is redundancy. If nasals are always voiced, then there cannot be a contrast with voiceless nasals. Two things follow from this in the way we use features in the theory:
  

  • we need only indicate those feature markings which contribute to the contrasts in a particular language;

  • we can capture the redundancies in a separate table of 'metarules' - rules outside the df matrix.

  Omitting feature markings where there is redundancy means literally leaving the redundant cells blank in the distinctive feature matrix. The fact of the redundancy is captured by separate rules which take the general form:
  

  if X then Y
  

  or, in our specific example:
  

  if [+nasal] then [+voice].
  

  But why would we want to capture this redundancy, except to show that it is a regularity in the way segmental features pattern? We want to do this because it is easy to show that speakers of a language know about the redundancy. Let's look at an example: there are three nasals in English, the nasal alveolar stop [n], the bilabial nasal stop [m] and the velar nasal [ng]. If we ask an English speaker to 'invent' a new nasal - say, a palatal nasal like the one found in French 'angeau' - they will also automatically make it [+voice]. It's as though they know that nasals must be voiced - which is another way of stating the rule above.
  The original important text on this point was R. Stanley's 'Redundancy rules in phonology', published in the journal Language in 1967 (vol. 43). These redundancy rules were called 'segment structure rules' to contrast them with another type: 'sequence structure rules'. The latter capture a speaker's knowledge of redundancy in the specification of segments themselves in patterned sequences. Thus if we have the sequence at the beginning of a syllable in English: CCCV..., then the first C must be [s] - a completely redundant situation, since all we need to know is that there is a consonant there, followed by two others. In fact there are heavy constraints also, of course, on the remaining two consonants: the second one must be a plosive and the third must be liquid of some sort (or a semi-vowel). Some phonologists have pointed out that the onset of a syllable strings consonants together with increasing sonority until you get to the vowel nucleus (the supreme sonorous segment), followed by a coda of consonants of decreasing sonority - though there are exceptions to this principle.
  Make a distinction then between the use of features for characterising the contrastive properties of phonological segments, and using them to indicate redundancy. A 'incomplete' distinctive feature matrix uses blanks to indicate redundancy (and let you know where cells are the subject of redundancy rules), whereas a 'fully specified' distinctive feature matrix has all cells filled with either a + or a - .
  

• There is much more to Distinctive Feature Theory than dealt with here. You should consult some of the recommended textbooks on phonology to find a fuller treatment - or attend one of the Department's courses in phonology! The main thing to remember is that DF theory is a significant step forward in classification from the rather crude phonetically-based ideas of Classical Phonetics. Remembering, however, that it is essentially a concept in abstract phonology (rather than phonetics), its principal importance lies in how it lends itself to capturing the generality of phonological processes and the structure of segments in phonology.

Sept.1.11 Wu Zun Misunderstood "My Kingdom" As A Warrior Script

Source: Fahrenheit News Original Source: China Daily Translated By: yaluncute at fahrenheitai.blogspot.com Recently, Wu Zun said in an interview with DaBao, that play in the "My Kingdom" was interesting,he said that he played the role but at the beginning he mistakenly believed that "My Kingdom" is kind of depicts the effort of "Strong Warriors" on Battlefield. He then slowly learned about the Opera. In "My Kingdom" Wu Zun has acted from their clothing,from make-up to the words and deeds have lamented the high standards and admits that he played great in the process of "My Kingdom" and is very enjoyable. "Kingdom" Mistaken As "Holy Warriors" Wu Zun said that he grew up in Brunei, so he did not know what the opera is actually . So in the film "My Kingdom" before, Chun had thought that the "My Kingdom" refers to the kind of fighters on the battlefield, very strong self-righteous people who refer to martial arts. He was still thinking again how to play such a "holy warriors", with perfection. When picked up this movie, I got the real opportunity to learn. I realize I misunderstood the original meaning Takefu. In the crew a lot of professional opera born actor who, Wu Zun often referred for their opinion, in practice, they also have been observing them, Wu Zun and said he often surf the Internet to check some information, then repeated to see some of the prior opera-related film, from which he got to understand the opera. Then the audience was fortunate to see My Kingdom originally thought was "Holy Warriors", Wu Zun, transformed into a real Takefu (warrior). Oily Head, Heavy Makeup Wu Zun thinks that script in "My Kindom" and Warriors are alike, to do everything as Takefu(warriors) see themselves pushed to the most tight, most extreme, and trying to do everything well. For the Opera, Wu Zun had to maintain his oil hairs, heavy makeup. Peking Opera makeup takes a long time, every detail has to be taken care of, if not careful then, on the big screen it is easy to find flaws. Wu Zun said that the opera makeup each time took nearly an hour or two, he rarely had an opportunity to have this kind of make up, so this film was particularly fun, you can try different things, so often self-timer. But also "can not afford to get hurt" because of the makeup is not easy, can not move, can only use a straw to drink water. Cleansing is even more difficult, Wu Zun still remember the first time that the makeup did not get off entirely, cannot afford to go back with that face. Not only the heavy make-up was on the requirements but also many of the martial arts and Wu Zun did not come in contact of any of them before, there are many with a combination of opera, like using Huaqiang. Wu Zun has learned sword play before, but not the Huaqiang (as for double knife sword) and as Huaqiang, such weapons is not easy to start with, then after getting familiar with it "Very Satisfied."         INDONESIA TRANSLATE Sept.1.11 Wu Zun disalahpahami "Kerajaan-Ku" Sebagai Sebuah Script Prajurit Baru-baru ini, Wu Zun mengatakan dalam sebuah wawancara dengan DaBao, yang bermain di "Kerajaan saya" adalah menarik, ia mengatakan bahwa ia memainkan peran tetapi pada awal ia keliru percaya bahwa "Kerajaan" adalah jenis menggambarkan upaya "Kuat prajurit "di Battlefield. Dia kemudian perlahan belajar tentang Opera. Dalam "Kerajaan-Ku" Wu Zun telah bertindak dari pakaian mereka, dari make-up untuk kata-kata dan perbuatan telah menyesalkan standar yang tinggi dan mengakui bahwa ia bermain bagus dalam proses "Kerajaan-Ku" dan sangat menyenangkan. "Kerajaan" keliru Sebagai "Laskar Kudus"Wu Zun berkata bahwa ia dibesarkan di Brunei, jadi dia tidak tahu apa opera sebenarnya. Jadi dalam film "Kerajaan-Ku" sebelumnya, Chun telah berpikir bahwa "Kerajaan saya" mengacu pada jenis pejuang di medan perang, sangat kuat diri benar orang-orang yang mengacu pada seni bela diri. Dia masih berpikir lagi cara bermain seperti "pejuang suci", dengan kesempurnaan. Ketika mengangkat film ini, saya mendapat kesempatan nyata untuk belajar. Aku sadar aku salah memahami makna aslinya Takefu. Dalam kru banyak aktor opera profesional yang lahir, Wu Zun sering disebut pendapat mereka, dalam praktek, mereka juga telah mengamati mereka, Wu Zun dan mengatakan dia sering surfing internet untuk memeriksa beberapa informasi, kemudian diulang untuk melihat beberapa film opera-terkait sebelumnya, dari mana ia harus mengerti opera. Kemudian penonton beruntung untuk melihat Kerajaan awalnya saya pikir "Laskar Kudus", Wu Zun, berubah menjadi Takefu nyata (prajurit). Kepala Berminyak, Makeup Berat Wu Zun berpikir bahwa script di "Kindom saya" dan Warriors yang sama, melakukan segala sesuatu sebagai Takefu (prajurit) melihat diri mereka didorong ke yang paling ketat, paling ekstrem, dan mencoba untuk melakukan semuanya dengan baik. Untuk Opera, Wu Zun harus mempertahankan minyaknya rambut, riasan tebal. Opera Peking riasan membutuhkan waktu yang lama, setiap detail harus dirawat, jika tidak hati-hati kemudian, pada layar besar itu mudah untuk menemukan kekurangan. Wu Zun berkata bahwa susunan opera setiap kali waktu hampir satu atau dua jam, ia jarang memiliki kesempatan untuk memiliki jenis make up, jadi film ini sangat menyenangkan, Anda dapat mencoba hal yang berbeda, begitu sering self-timer. Tapi juga "tidak mampu untuk terluka" karena make up tidak mudah, tidak bisa bergerak, hanya dapat menggunakan sedotan untuk minum air. Pembersihan bahkan lebih sulit, Wu Zun masih ingat pertama kalinya bahwa makeup tidak turun seluruhnya, tidak mampu kembali dengan wajah itu. Tidak hanya berat make-up pada persyaratan, tetapi juga banyak seni bela diri dan Wu Zun tidak datang dalam kontak apapun dari mereka sebelumnya, ada banyak dengan kombinasi opera, seperti menggunakan Huaqiang. Wu Zun telah belajar bermain pedang sebelumnya, tapi tidak Huaqiang (seperti pedang pisau ganda) dan sebagai Huaqiang, senjata tersebut tidak mudah untuk memulai dengan, maka setelah mendapatkan akrab dengan itu "Sangat Puas."

炎亞綸Aaron Yan - 下一個我Xia Yi Ge Wo - The Next Me

听到第一个我说做人要诚恳
ting dao di yi ge wo shuo zuo ren yao cheng ken
偏偏第二个我刚刚穿好保护色
pian pian di er ge wo gang gang chuan hao bao hu se
第三个我 在干什么
di san ge wo zai gan shen me
静静 看着 两个我 在拔河
jing jing kan zhe liang ge wo zai ba he

第四个我热血沸腾彻夜唱著歌　
di si ge wo re xie fei teng che ye chang zhe ge
第五个我却赖在床上一直瘫痪睡著
di wu ge wo que lai zai chuang shang yi zhi tan huan shui zhe
 

第六七个我　
di liu qi ge wo
到哪里呢
dao na li ne
难道背叛我了
nan dao bei pan wo le

Chorus
一边笑得疯了　
yi bian xiao de feng le
一边哭得累了　
yi bian ku de lei le
判若　两人
pan ruo liang ren
快要放弃了　
kuai yao fang qi le
快要虚脱了
kuai yao xu tuo le
下一　个我　又是　
xia yi ge wo you shi
什么　角色
shen me jiao se

一边温驯爱著
yi bian wen xun ai zhe
一边激烈恨著　
yi bian ji lie hen zhe
心能有几颗
xin neng you ji ke
我痛得快死了　
wo tong de kuai si le
可却还能活著
ke que hai neng huo zhe
你说 该如何
ni shuo gai ru he
-end of chorus-


上一个我还没修完失恋的功课
shang yi ge wo hai mei xiu wan shi lian de gong ke
下一个我却迫不及待很想坠入爱河
xia yi ge wo que po bu ji dai hen xiang zhui ru ai he
同一个躯壳　不同人生
tong yi ge qu ke bu tong ren sheng
每个我都陌生
mei ge wo dou mo sheng

Repeat chorus

一边加速冲了　
yi bian jia su chong le
一边却在煞车　
yi bian que zai sha che
判若　两人
pan ruo liang ren
我不是我的　
wo bu shi wo de
属于别人了
shu yu bie ren le
所以　自己　都没　资格　选择
suo yi zi ji dou mei zi ge xuan ze

一边极度快乐　
yi bian ji du kuai le
一边心如刀割　
yi bian xin ru dao ge
人格分裂著
ren ge fen lie zhe
等待下一个我　
deng dai xia yi ge wo
挑战这一个我
tiao zhan zhe yi ge wo
你说　扯不扯
ni shuo che bu che

Source: http://top10pinyinlyrics.blogspot.com/2011/04/aaron-yan-ya-lun-xia-yi-ge-wo-pinyin.html

[22/8/11] Wu Chun Relieves stress with Video Game

To coordinate with MY KINGDOM (DAI MO SUN)'s September release, Celestial Entertainment announced the first Chinese film game app for iPad so viewers could learn more about the film through the game. As soon as Wu Chun learned about the iPad version release could not wait to try it for himself.

Wu Chun said, "I downloaded it to play on my iPhone. Rarely playing games, I thought it was very fresh and interesting. In the end maybe because I was too involved, my hands were somewhat sore from playing, now the iPad version release to me is good news. Because I am very busy at work, sometimes I really need to play games to relieve some stress."

Speaking of taking a break, Wu Chun recalled the MY KINGDOM production. "When waiting for places with actors, we would think of ways to relax a little. Not only can we ease the tension but also improve our relationships. For example when I am in the Monkey King make up, I would drag Han Geng into playing Sun Wukong" Wu Chun and Han Geng did not let go of the change to work with magician Liu Qian. They asked him to teach them minor magic tricks during breaks. However magic was truly too complicated and they both failed in the end.


( Indonesia Translate)

[22/8/11] Wu Chun Meredakan stres dengan Video Game



Untuk koordinasi dengan KERAJAAN SAYA (DAI MO SUN) 's rilis September, Celestial Entertainment mengumumkan film permainan aplikasi pertama Cina untuk iPad sehingga pemirsa bisa belajar lebih banyak tentang film melalui permainan. Begitu Wu Chun belajar tentang rilis versi iPad tidak sabar untuk mencobanya sendiri.

 
Wu Chun mengatakan, "saya download untuk bermain pada iPhone Jarang bermain game, saya pikir itu sangat segar dan menarik.. Pada akhirnya mungkin karena aku terlalu sibuk, tangan saya agak pegal dari bermain, saat rilis versi iPad bagi saya adalah kabar baik Karena saya sangat sibuk bekerja, kadang-kadang saya benar-benar harus bermain game untuk menghilangkan stres.. "

 
Berbicara tentang istirahat, Wu Chun teringat produksi KERAJAAN SAYA. "Ketika menunggu untuk tempat dengan aktor, kita akan memikirkan cara-cara untuk bersantai sedikit Tidak hanya dapat kita meredakan ketegangan, tetapi juga meningkatkan hubungan kita.. Misalnya ketika saya di Raja Monyet make up, aku akan menyeret Han Geng dalam bermain Sun Wukong "Wu Chun dan Han Geng tidak melepaskan perubahan untuk bekerja dengan penyihir Liu Qian. Mereka meminta dia untuk mengajarkan mereka trik sulap ringan saat istirahat. Namun ajaib benar-benar terlalu rumit dan keduanya gagal pada akhirnya