Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2008
Recent work in distinctive features and feature geometry has presented strong evidence that certain features are privative: they have no negative values, so a sound is either marked [F] or else it is not. Evidence comes from possible types of sounds (for example, multiply articulated segments, in Sagey 1986) and from the fact that the negative values of these features are not referred to in phonological rules. Currently there is a nearly universal consensus that Place features are privative, and converging evidence from several authors (Mester & Itô 1989; Cho 1990; Lombardi 1991, 1995a) that [voice] is privative also.