This 31st collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-
DF’s helps us to judge whether a certain phonetic entity is legitimate in English.
To analyse vowels a small number of distinctive features is needed, like ‘short’, ‘pure’ and ‘close’.
Sounds of language share certain distinctive features which exhibit different behavioural patterns.
DF’s rule states that if there be a [+stop] there would exist a [-continuant] and vice-
Distinct DFs enable us to make distinct comparisons with respect to the rest.
DF’s already group sounds into their natural classes of stops, fricative and affricates and non-
Determining a clear criteria of a [+sonorant] sound, for example, means that many sounds will not fall into the category of [+sonorant].
A feature like [-voice] explains that if you can’t pronounce voiceless sounds, you say e.g. [rɪtʃ] with a dark ‘r’.
DF’s are unhelpful. We see a contradiction of why a smooth airflow out of the mouth eg [f] sound, should be considered not smooth and [f] be termed [-sonorant] when it actually helps the airflow out of the mouth to be continuous.
More to come...