This article examines a turning point in the history of the theory of phonological distinctive features. In Morris Halle’s (1959) The Sound Pattern of Russian, features are organized into a contrastive hierarchy designed to minimize the number of specified features. Redundancy rules, however, ensure that the resulting underspecification has no real phonological consequences and, in subsequent generative approaches to phonology, contrastive hierarchies were largely abandoned. We explore how Halle’s hierarchy would have been different if it had been based on phonological patterns such as voicing assimilation, and show that this reorganization makes plausible predictions about other aspects of Russian phonology. We conclude by pointing to recent work in which the concept of a contrastive hierarchy has been revived, illustrating the range of phenomena that this theoretical device can account for if minimizing specifications is not the primary concern.

中文翻译：

---

未走的路：俄语音型与音韵对比史

本文考察了音韵特征论历史上的一个转折点。莫里斯·哈勒 (1959)俄语的声音模式, 特征被组织成一个对比层次结构，旨在最小化指定特征的数量。然而，冗余规则确保了由此产生的规范不足不会产生真正的语音后果，并且在随后的语音生成方法中，对比层次结构在很大程度上被抛弃了。我们探讨了如果哈雷的层次结构基于语音同化等语音模式会如何不同，并表明这种重组对俄语语音学的其他方面做出了合理的预测。我们最后指出最近的工作，其中对比层次的概念已经恢复，说明如果最小化规格不是主要问题，这种理论装置可以​​解释的现象范围。