2.4.5. Feature model

This paragraph will take us back to both consonant and vowel systemic comparisons between the two languages, or any number of contrasted languages, for that matter. The method consists in comparing distinctive features only, instead of comparing long lists of phonemes. Thus, for instance, we could just start comparing the English and the Russian consonant systems by juxta­posing the two distinctive features: alveolar vs. dental, or fortis vs. lenis.

In phonology the notion of distinctive features describes sound units as actually composed of simultaneously occurring features, a bundle of distinctive features. The features were drawn from a universal set of distinctive features. Thus the same features were used for classifying vowels and consonants. The features are binary: vowels are marked, for instance, as either [+high] or [—high], [+low] or [—low]. One of the principles is that the system should be economical. Mid-open (or mid-high) vowels were marked [-high] and [—low], which put them in a separate class (without using additional labels).

Any sound could thus be matched with any other sound which exhibited similar properties simply by specifying a rule involving that specific feature or a subset of features. For example, Chomsky and Halle's "Sound Pattern of English" (1968) has a rule which deals only with those sounds in English which have the feature of [+coronal]; this involves only those sounds (dental, alveolar and palato-alveolar) which involve the tongue tip and blade (the crown, or "corona"), thus excluding those which are [—coronal] (labial and velar). This grouping can obviously be neatly and accurately specified with just one feature.

Distinctive feature model makes the description of a particular sound or a group of sounds more economical. It was aimed at discovering elements universal to all languages. Features are usually considered to be binary, for instance: [+high], [—high], [+voiced], [—voiced]. R. Jakobson, G. Fant and M. Halle established 12 binary distinctive oppositions, with the help of which, as they claim, it is possible to classify the phonemes of any language. For the English language the following 9 oppositions are sufficient: vocalic - non-vocalic, consonantal — non-consonantal, compact — diffuse, grave — acute, flat — plain, nasal — oral, tense - lax, dis­continuous — continuant, strident — mellow.

In phonetics and phonology the features are based either on articulatory analysis (cf. IPA — International Phonetic Alphabet) or on acoustic details of the sounds produced by speakers, the analysis of the spectra of sounds (Jakobson, Fant and Halle). The feature model associated with transformational generative grammar is a mixture of acoustic and articulatory details. It is less accepted in general use than IPA. Generative phonology continues to develop as a purely American phenomenon (see "Dynamic models" below).

2.4.6. Functional features

Already in comparing the sound systems of different languages or dialects of the same language we could take into account not only the formal level of analysis of features and inventories but also the functional load of various sounds and their oppositions. We could see that some sounds are more common than others, and some oppositions are more powerful than others. The fact that 10 phonemes /э, n, t, i,- s, г, Э, 1, d, e/ accounted for 47% of the sample of conversational English, suggests a greater functional load carried by them and more powerful oppositions in which they are involved.

The total ratio of consonants to vowels in the sample of speech was about 2 to 1; vowels accounted for 38% of the data, consonants for 58%, and retroflex and syllable elements for the remaining 4%. Similar data in "The Encyclopeadia of the English Language" {Crystal 1995) also suggest that consonants are more important as information-carriers than vowels: the percentage is 60.79% vs. 39.21%.

The frequency of a particular phoneme may depend on the frequency of the words in which it occurs. For example, [d] does not occur in many words, but those words are very common: the, this, that, these, those, then, there, they. Most of them are function words used for deixis.

The so-called "schwa"-sound [з] is very common for two reasons: it is used in commonly appearing words, such as a, the, that, and at the same time it is most frequent in unstressed syllables which is a result of a very strong dynamic stress in English.

Unfortunately we do not possess enough data to continue the comparison of English vowels and consonants with their counterparts in Russian. We could only repeat the fact that although Russian belongs to the consonantal type of sound system, and English to the vocalic one, the frequency of English consonants, both voiced and voiceless, as well as the time they occupy in speech is a little higher than in Russian (see Table 6 above).