ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the features that specify the place of articulation of consonants and the tongue position of vowels. Among the place features, there are four univalent features specifying the major areas of articulation. It presents the notational devices Chomsky and Halle employed in their formulation of phonological rules, which often figure in phonological generalizations generally, whether these are expressed as rules or as constraints. This particular conception of underspecification, in which features are specified only in segments that contrast for the feature concerned, is known as contrastive underspecification. Phonological rules are formal expressions that describe changes in the phonological representations of words. The information to the left of the arrow is the focus of the change, that between the arrow and the slash is the structural change (SC), while the information to the right of the slash is the context.
