Features and natural classes in the architecture of phonological grammar

• Autor(a) principal: Matzenauer, Carmen Lúcia Barreto
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Fórum Linguístico
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/forum/article/view/1984-8412.2020v17nespp4612

By focusing on the role that features have in the architecture of phonological grammar, this study aims to discuss the decisive role of this linguistic unit in the organizational pattern of segments in natural classes, since they account for the operation of phonological processes in both vowel and consonant systems. Data from phonological acquisition, particularly from the Brazilian Portuguese consonant system, supported by phenomena arising from linguistic loanwords and from changes in the inventory of consonants from Latin to Contemporary Portuguese, led to arguments that confirm the hypothesis that certain features are priority definers of the organization of natural classes of segments in grammar structuring in both child language acquisition and in the synchronic or diachronic functioning of any language. Some features act as nuclear or aggregative ones in the occupation of phonetic-phonological spaces, a fact that led to the proposition of a Feature Aggregation Scale, which is responsible for the constitution of classes of segments.