2024/12/03 by B. Elan Dresher · 1 voice
Psychology · Arts and Humanities · #Phonetics and Phonology Research #Linguistics and language evolution #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
paper · doi:10.1075/nowele.00088.dre
openalex publication_date 2024/12/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract I discuss an analysis of changes in the Scandinavian runic alphabet, or futhark, by Jørgen Rischel (1966) . Rischel’s article accounts for some puzzling changes in the futhark by employing contrastive feature hierarchies represented as branching trees. Feature hierarchies can be traced back to the work of Roman Jakobson and his colleagues. They enjoyed a brief period of prominence in the 1950s and 1960s, but then disappeared from mainstream phonological theory. However, they were employed in a number of interesting studies of Germanic and other languages whose insights we can still profit from today. The goal of this paper is to bring attention to this largely forgotten approach to phonological analysis, and to spell out the principles that underlie it.