Grammatical Features Inventory: Origins of the concept feature

In attempting to understand language, many researchers use features, the elements
into which linguistic units, such as words, can be broken down. Examples of features
are NUMBER (singular, plural, dual, ...), PERSON (1st, 2nd, 3rd), and TENSE (present,
past, ...). Features have proved invaluable for analysis and description, and have a
major role in contemporary linguistics, from the most abstract theorising to the most
applied computational applications. Yet little is firmly established about features:
we have no inventory of which features are found in the world's languages, no agreed
account of how they operate across different components of language, no certainty on
how they interact, and thus no general theory of features. They are used, but are
little discussed and poorly understood. This is a central gap in the conceptual
underpinning of much linguistic investigation.

The Grammatical Features Inventory is an attempt to put the notion of linguistic
'feature' on a sounder empirical and conceptual base. It aims to provide evidence for
the diverse content of features in the world's languages, as well as discuss some of
their formal properties, particularly in morphology (word structure) and syntax
(sentence structure).

The development of the concept of 'feature' as the ultimate component of speech can be tracked back into antiquity, and the principle of distinctive functions of sounds has underlied most attempts to design and reform alphabets. At the end of the 19th century, the only vocabulary available for the discussion of the sounds of speech were the words used also to talk about writing, but soon the concept of the 'phoneme' was developed, and discussions of the phoneme led to the emergence of features. Following the definition of the phoneme in terms of distinctive function, the concept of the distinctive feature as a core phonological notion and the theory of distinctive features were pioneered by the Prague School in the first half of the 20th century. Since it was taken for granted by the majority of phonologists that any proposed feature system should have universal rather than language specific applicability, the goal of distinctive feature theory has been 'the attempt to develop a set of features adequate to the task of distinguishing and relating the elements of phonological systems across the range of possible human languages' (Brasington 1993:1042). Decades of research have demonstrated the usefulness of distinctive features in phonological analysis, as well as led to the discussion of properties of features and feature systems in general (such as binarity/n-arity, markedness, underspecification, the notion of default, the structuring of the feature systems). Despite this, current research in phonology calls into question the assumption that distinctive features are innate and describe natural classes (e.g. Mielke 2004).

This resource was created for the project 'Grammatical features: A key to
understanding language', funded by the Economic and Social Research Council under
grant number RES-051-27-0122. This support is gratefully acknowledged.