In the field of phonology, the use of feature geometry presents a method of measuring and standardizing phonemes and their production, especially characterizing mistakes and impediments. Feature geometry defines each articulation as a mathematical formula for the shape of the inner space which is used to create it. This developed from the descriptive geometry initially created by Gaspard Monge in the eighteenth century. (Biography, Monge, Gaspard (1746–1818) 2008) It provides a method for classifying phonological features of any language according to a set of classes developed, which are based upon the location, method of utterance, and the descriptive geometry of the speech organs. Using the set of classes developed by various contributors to the science of phonology, information can be then shared among peers, and discussions concerning the diagnosis of speech problems and the creation of mitigation techniques can take place. IN this way, much progress has been made, both in the field of linguistics and in the field of phonology and speech therapy.
“It is a familiar observation that certain phonological features pattern together recurrently across languages in phenomena such as assimilation, dissimilation, and reduction. Perhaps the phenomenon most frequently cited as an example of this is nasal place assimilation.” (Padgett, Jaye 2001). His paper argues for a new kind of understanding of feature class behavior – such as the recurrent patterning of pairs of certain phonological features, e.g., place of articulation and laryngeal features. His work proceeds from work in Feature Geometry in describing the classes of phonology, but argues that the features of a class are “targeted directly and individually by constraints (or rules), even when a feature class such as ‘Place’ is mentioned.” This is based on the assimilation of feature classes which are sometimes only partially successful across two languages for which an adequate understanding requires a view of feature classes as proposed, as possibly patterned in pairs. Also, broad categories of feature class generalization require the inclusion of dissimilatory effects generally described under the Obligatory Contour Principle. Overall, and this broadens the explanatory potential of the feature class idea due to Feature Geometry. Padgett suggests that the results suggest that linguistic representations sometimes.
Must be reconsidered in the context of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993), “since they can effectively function as inviolable constraints” They prevent understanding of a more subtle kind of phenomena found when using violable gradient constraints. (Padgett, Jaye 2001)
Ideas and scientifically informative exchanges like this are impossible without the use of the structures of phonological features and classes created using feature geometry. In other words, by creating the study of linguistic phenomena according to the production method and the inner geometry of the space and musculature used to create the sounds, we have an ability to measure and standardize the identification of sound, which can then be written. Without this set of classes of features in phonology, no written exchange of ideas would be possible. Further, even documenting research would be a weighty undertaking, considering that each and every sound class would then have to be described by setting up a standard, as was done, of phonemes and identifying them using an international alphabet and listing long strings of representations for sound. Of course, this leaves all kinds of room for differences and makes any kind of real standardization and sharing of information impossible.
Using feature geometry and creating classes of features in phonology, researchers, therapists, speech practitioners, linguists, and teachers have thus developed a method for sharing ideas, and much more progress has been made in these fields, especially in research and the development of speech pathology and therapy.
Since the creation and careful description of phonological classes of features using feature geometry, articles abound from contributors in all parts of the world involving all languages and language groups in current use everywhere. Articles such as this by Rose and King (2007), Speech error elicitation and co-occurrence restrictions in two Ethiopian Semitic languages. (Report). It can even span multiple languages and cross-reference language groups. To do this without Feature Geometry and the set of phonological principles developed from it would be equivalent to trying to discuss astronomy without a method for classifying and locating heavenly bodies or measurement systems for distance.
Feature Geometry has enabled the collaborative study of such things as sound production, transference of phonemes from mother tongue to a second language, correction of different types of speech problems, and such. Scientists like Andreas Kornai (2008) are even expanding the study of the classes and measurement and the mathematical constructions of features used in Feature Geometry. It is a subtle collaboration and reconstruction of social science and medicine with pure science, thus producing a hybrid useful to all. In some ways, all of this is built upon some of the work of Noam Chomsky of MIT (1965) as he first postulated that things involving social science and psychology could be more precise is some mathematical methods for measurement and classification were developed using computer science. In 1968 Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle published The Sound Pattern of English (SPE), the basis for Generative Phonology. In this view, phonological representations are sequences of segments made up of distinctive features. From this, two levels of feature identification developed with dozens of subsets. It was as if a whole new language had been created for the discussion of human utterance.
Kornai (2008) describes the “Standard Theory” of Feature Geometry thus: “The use of distinctive features is fundamental to both classical (SPE) and modern (autosegmental) generative phonology. But the best-known formal model of features (Cherry, Halle, and Jakobson 1953) actually predates generative phonology. In brief, this model (see also Cherry 1956, Cherry 1957) describes the assignment of feature values to segments as a mapping from the set S of segments into the Euclidean space of dimension n, where n is the number of features used in the analysis.”
In looking a Feature Geometry and its origins in Descriptive Geometry, we can begin to understand the value of such easily standardized measurements as mathematical quantities and apply them to the often totally arbitrary descriptions of human activity. Such is the case with phonology with the development of Feature Geometry. No science is able to develop without a way for sharing ideas among scientists and documenting research and collaborative thought. The development of classes of features in phonology using the standard made available through Feature Geometry has allowed the recent rapid development of this science and the progress made in the field in recent years.
Biography
Monge, Gaspard (1746–1818) 2008, The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology Online, Web.
Padgett, Jaye 2001, The Unabridged Feature Classes in Phonology* Language 78.2, March 2002, University of California, Santa Cruz
Chomski, Noam, 1965, Noam Chomsky. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
Chomsky, Noam, and Halle, Morris, 1968, The Sound Pattern of English (SPE), the basis for Generative Phonology, MIT Press, Massachusetts
Kornai, Andreas, 2009, The generative power of feature geometry CSLI, Stanford University, Web.
Colin Cherry, Morris Halle, and Roman Jakobson. 1953. Toward the logical description of languages in their phonemic aspect. Language, 29:34–46.
Colin Cherry. 1956. Roman jakobson’s distinctive features as the normal coordinates of a language. In Morris Halle, editor, For Roman Jakobson. Mouton, The Hague.
Colin Cherry. 1957. On human communication. MIT Press, Cambridge.