featural

1 8.6

About small parts or details that help identify something

adjective
/ˈfiːtʃərəl/

Specialized

: característico

Configural processing is thought to be superior to featural processing.

Examples

Linguists often analyze languages using featural distinctions to understand individual properties.
It appears that participants who are better able to individuate basketball players and famous African Americans are processing both same- and other-race faces in featural mode rather than configural mode, although there still remains a superior recognition for same-race faces.

Academic text (2004)
In phonetics, featural analysis helps in identifying the specific traits of different sounds.
The study focused on featural attributes, which are essential for differentiating similar words.

Surface Forms

featural positive

Morphology

featural = feature (transparent) = feature + al

The adjective is directly formed from the noun 'feature' with the regular suffix '-al', and the meaning is straightforwardly 'relating to features'.

Etymology

Featural comes from the word feature ('part' or 'quality') plus the ending -al ('related to'). A helpful image is to think of a feature as a part of the 'face' like an eye or nose, so featural means 'about the parts or properties' of something, for example the small parts used in sound or image analysis.