4.5: Natural Classes
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- 9654
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It’s possible to describe an individual speech segment in terms of its phonetic features. It’s also possible to group sounds that share features into natural classes. Natural classes of sounds tend to behave similarly because they have features in common. We can distinguish obstruents, sonorants, glides, and vowels using the major class features, and distinguish in more detail within these major classes using features for place and manner of articulation.
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