LIN100Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Nasal Consonant, Sonorant, Obstruent
Document Summary
Linguists consider features to be the most basic units of phonology. They are the basic building blocks of speech sounds. The study of phonetics shows that speech is produced by a number of independent but coordinated articulatory activities such as voicing, tongue position, lip rounding, and so on. Features reflect the articulatory basis of speech in the sense that each feature encodes one of the independently controllable aspects of speech production. This sound is produced with a low, back, and tense tongue body (dorsal) position, with no rounding of the lips (therefore no labial activity) and little constriction. It is a vowel, and therefore is voiced and sonorant as well. These features define the segment as vowel, consonant, or glide (here a vowel) This feature defines articulation (here dorsal, since vowels are produced with tongue body activity) These features specify the exact position of the articulator (here the dorsum is low and back)
