Place Features

Definition

Place features are used to refer to the places in the vocal tract where constriction occurs during articulation for consonants. During vowel production, place is used to describe the part of the tongue that is active during articulation. A segment will only be specified for the place of articulation that is relevant for the particular phoneme. For example, tongue height feature would not be used to describe a consonant articulation (Zsiga, 2013, p. 264).

Place features includes a distinction between [labial], [coronal], [dorsal], [pharyngeal], and [laryngeal] classes. Place features are not labelled using a binary +/-.

This chart illustrates many of the places of articulation that are relevant when describing place features (Riggle, J., 2011).

Examples

Hul’q’umi’num’

Skwxwú7mesh

Secwepemctsin