{"id":2813,"date":"2011-09-17T12:45:15","date_gmt":"2011-09-17T11:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/?page_id=2813"},"modified":"2011-10-06T18:20:14","modified_gmt":"2011-10-06T17:20:14","slug":"greek-letter-variable","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/?page_id=2813","title":{"rendered":":Greek letter variable:"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A device used in writing <a href=\"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/?page_id=1051\">phonological rules<\/a>. The use of a Greek letter in a feature specification in place of a + or &#8211; indicates that the feature can take either a positive or negative value, but the same Greek letter must take the same value throughout the rule. This device is used to collapse a number of similar rules into one. For example, a language might display the following characteristics (1) the first of two adjacent <a href=\"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/?page_id=572\">obstruents<\/a> must be <a href=\"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/?page_id=595\">voiced<\/a> if the following obstruent is voiced (2) the first of two obstruents must be <a href=\"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/?page_id=527\">voiceless<\/a> if the second is voiceless. One could write two rules to capture this:<\/p>\n<p>(1) [-son] \u2192 [+voi] \/ ___ [-son, +voi]<br \/>\n(2) [-son] \u2192 [-voi] \/ ___ [-son, -voi]<\/p>\n<p>This solution misses the generalisation that the first obstruent agrees with whatever voicing value the second obstruent has. Using a Greek letter variable the rules would be collapsed into:<\/p>\n<p>[-son] \u2192 [\u03b1voi] \/ ___ [-son, \u03b1voi]<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes it is necessary to capture the situation where segments <em>disagree<\/em> in the value for some feature. In this case a minus sign is used before the second occurrence of the Greek letter. Thus the rule:<\/p>\n<p>[-son] \u2192 [\u03b1voi] \/ ___ [-son, -\u03b1voi]<\/p>\n<p>says that if the second obstruent is voiced the first must be voiceless and if it is voiceless the first must be voiced.<\/p>\n<p>Note that in feature specifications including more than one Greek letter variable, the different variables are independent.  So, for example, [\u03b1son, \u03b2voi] abbreviates the four specifications [+son, +voi], [+son, -voi], [-son, +voi] and [-son, -voi].<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Also called <strong>alpha notation<\/strong>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A device used in writing phonological rules. The use of a Greek letter in a feature specification in place of a + or &#8211; indicates that the feature can take either a positive or negative value, but the same Greek &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/?page_id=2813\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":180,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2813"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2813"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2819,"href":"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2813\/revisions\/2819"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogjam.name\/sid\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}