A STUDY OF DISSIMILARITY IN DISTINCTIVE FEATURES

Since the phonetic level represents the final stages of the higher-order phonologral level, the present study sought to ascertain the perceptual saliency of certain selected distinctive features from the Chomsky and Halle （1968） system and their appropriateness. The study combined a psychophysieal orientation and a memory strategy in order to circumvent the problem of speech redundancy with a forced-choice decision of dissimilarity between two-pairs of minimally-distinct dyads. In addition, the investigation was designed to validate certain aspects of an earlier study by Stewart and Barach （1978）. The results indicated that certain features are more salient than others and a hierarchical structure is plausible. The study appears to show that distinctive features do not possess equal perceptual weightings, and are not strictly binary in nature.