Feature geometry is easily compatible with theories of underspecification and can represent incomplete segments by missing nodes.
The first formal model of feature geometry was introduced in print by George N. Clements in 1985, drawing on unpublished work by K.P.
Other important models have been proposed by Elizabeth Sagey (1986), John J. McCarthy (1988), and Clements & Hume (1995).
Models vary widely in the number of the hierarchical nodes and in how consonant and vowel features are treated.
In 2003, Charles Reiss argued that feature geometry is insufficiently powerful to account for a class of phonological rules that involve dependencies between segments, such as partial and total identity and nonidentity.