Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.06.1970, Page 101

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Finally, one must bear in mind that the antithesis form vs.
substance, while retaining its validity intact, has nevertheless
tended to produce a synthesis of its own. In phonology, this
tendency appears in the notion of distxnctive feature. While
the role of this notion in historical phonology will be ex-
amined in broad outline below (§ 4), the basic problem in-
herent in this notion must be fully realized. This is whether
distinctive features are to be regarded as positive concepts,
having certain concrete, material properties, or whether they
are negative, abstract and relational, entities, of a similar
order as the phoneme. The most comprehensive attempt at
a solution of this fundamental question is to be found in the
phonological theory of generative grammar. But, as will
be mentioned below (§ 5), this has as yet been of limited con-
sequence for historical phonology.
3. The Phonological Structure: Relational Change
3.1. As the third point we may mention the consideration
that speech sounds are to be looked upon not only as in-
dividual, isolated entities, having certain positive, material
properties, but that they are also, and perhaps primarily, to be
regarded as negative, relational or oppositional, units, owing
their linguistic status to their relationships to the other units
of the same linguistic level; the totality of these relationships,
paradigmatic as well as syntagmatic, is the structure of the
bnguistic level or system in question.
For historical phonology these considerations have several
implications of fundamental significance. In general, the prin-
ciples involved imply that an analysis of the historical develop-
ment of a single speech sound, isolated from all others, is
never of any interest. Instead, such an analysis must con-
centrate upon the entire system of which the unit in question
is an element; the change of the individual speech sound
must be seen as a particular manifestation of the development