Feature Specification and Underspecification

The concept of minimal feature specification has been part of the phonological dialogue throughout the modern era, from the introduction of archiphonemes (Jakobson 1929; Martinet 1936; Trubetzkoy 1936) through various types of specification: Markedness (Kean 1975), Radical Underspecification (Archangeli 1984, 1988), Contrastive Underspecification (Steriade 1987; Mackenzie and Dresher 2004; Dresher 2009), and Combinatorial Specification (Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994) to Richness of the Base (Prince and Smolensky 1993; Itôet al.1995; Smolensky 1996). What is common to the various approaches is that features may be absent from at least some segments at any level of representation. Theories differ on when – or whether – the missing features are provided. For example, the Markedness rules of Chomsky and Halle (1968) provide values (the unmarked specifications) for all features on every segment before the application of any phonological rules, whereas under more recent perspectives, some segments exit the entire phonological‐phonetic component without receiving specifications for every feature (Keating 1988; Pierrehumbert and Beckman 1988; Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994).