Natural class

In phonology, a natural class is a set of phonemes in a language that

share certain distinctive features.[1] A natural class is determined by
participation in shared phonological processes, described using the
minimum number of features necessary for descriptive adequacy.

Overview
Classes are defined by distinctive features having reference to
articulatory and acoustic phonetic properties,[2] including manners of
articulation, places of articulation, voicing, and continuance. For
example, the set containing the sounds /p/, /t/, and /k/ is a natural
class of voiceless stops in American Standard English. This class is
one of several other classes, including the voiced stops (/b/, /d/, and
/g/), voiceless fricatives (/f/, /θ/, /s/, /ʃ/, and /h/), sonorants, and
vowels.

To give a further example, the system of Chomsky and Halle defines

the class of voiceless stops by the specification of two binary features:
[-continuant] and [-voice].[3] Any sound with both the feature [-
continuant] (not able to be pronounced continuously) and the feature [-
voice] (not pronounced with vibration of the vocal cords) is included in
the class, thus specifying all and only the voiceless stops.

By implication, the class is also described as not having the features

[+continuant] or [+voice]. This means that all sounds with either the
feature [+continuant] (able to be lengthened in pronunciation) or
[+voice] (pronounced with vibration of the vocal cords) are excluded
from the class. This excludes all natural classes of sounds besides
voiceless stops. For instance, it excludes voiceless fricatives, which
have the feature [+continuant], voiced stops, which have the feature
[+voice], and liquids and vowels, which have the features [+continuant]
and [+voice].

Voiceless stops also have other, redundant, features, such as

[+consonantal] and [-lateral]. These are not relevant to the description
of the class and are unnecessary, since the features [-continuant] and [-
voice] already include all voiceless stops and exclude all other sounds.

It is expected that members of a natural class will behave similarly in

the same phonetic environment, and will have a similar effect on
sounds that occur in their environment.

References
1. Giegerich, Heinz J. (1992-10-15). English Phonology: An
Introduction . Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521336031.

2. Jakobson, Roman (2002-01-01). Phonological Studies . Walter de

Gruyter. ISBN 9783110173628.
 3. Chomsky, Noam; Halle, Morris (1991-01-01). The Sound Pattern of
English . MIT Press. ISBN 9780262530972.

External links
Glossary of linguistic terms: What is a natural class?

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