ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore and further develop a feature system for vowels proposed by Jean-Roger Vergnaud at the GLOW meeting in Paris. This feature system will be compared at various points with competing approaches. One major aspect of the proposed feature system which is not dealt in sufficient depth is that it should be compatible with suprasegmental phonological structures and processes such as vowel harmony, tonal phenomena, etc. which are receiving increased attention in current work on non-linear phonology. It is clear that the feature Advanced Tongue Root(ATR) is well motivated and must be included in the feature make-up of vowels. Since the chapter wishes to make maximum use of features, the next step must be to consider what other uses the feature ATR could have within the vowel systems of natural languages. The chapter briefly reviews the major areas of agreement and disagreement between non-linear and dependency phonology, before considering two traditional ('segmental') phonological processes.
