Philippine E-Journals

Defying Orthodoxy: A Critique on the Distinctive Features Theory of Trubetzkoy, Jakobson and Chomsky

Nicanor L. Guinto

 

Abstract:

The century that transpired bore witness to the rapid and rigid shift in the study of human language, essentially initiated by the ground-breaking lecture of Ferdinand de Saussure published posthumously by his students in 1916. Agreements, contradictions, inspirations, and disappointments fuelled the vehicle of greater explorations in the field, exhausting every possibility and opportunity to discover the underlying principles behind the intricate architecture of human language. In this case, the phonological system of language is indeed not an exception.