Paper

A Model Theoretic Perspective on Phonological Feature Systems

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Abstract

This paper uses model theory to analyze the formal properties of three phonological feature systems: privative, full binary, and underspecified. By systematically manipulating the choice of logical language and representational primitives, it is shown that logical negation effectively converts any feature system into a full binary one. This further implies that in order to have underspecification or non-binary feature oppositions, valuation should be encoded into the representational primitives rather than derived through the logical connectives. These results are obtained by comparing the predicted natural classes of each formalization.

Keywords: model theory, logic, phonological features

How to Cite:

Nelson, S., (2022) “A Model Theoretic Perspective on Phonological Feature Systems”, Society for Computation in Linguistics 5(1), 1-10. doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/g77n-za52