Feature Organization
Résumé
Feature organization involves the study of the internal composition of` speech sounds. This article reviews linguistic approaches to this topic dating from the mid-20th century with a special emphasis on the theory known as Feature Geometry. This theory, in its simplest and most general form, characterizes segment-internal feature structure in terms of a feature tree whose terminal nodes are features, whose intermediate nodes are feature classes, and whose root node groups all features defining the segment. The principle objective of this approach is to provide a formal characterization of the class of possible phonological processes. More recent developments and extensions of this approach are examined, with special emphasis on applications to phonetics, such as Articulatory Phonology.