Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

Chapter 1. Introduction
In this study I investigate the typology and implementation of positional
neutralization of contrasts in vowel inventories, with an eye both to accounting in a
meaningful way for regularities in that typology, and to elucidating, on the basis of the
phenomena observed, the nature of the relationship between phonetics and phonology
more generally. Most current approaches to positional neutralization (PN) attribute the
emergence of crosslinguistic regularities in patterns of positional neutralization to
specific restrictions imposed on possible phonological systems by Universal Grammar. I
argue here that the role of the phonological grammar in generating the typology of PN
systems, particularly as concerns matters of phonetic naturalness or grounding, is far less
central than has previously been assumed. Rather, a diachronic phonologization approach
to PN yields far more accurate typological predictions as to which systems should and
should not be attested, while at the same time providing realistic phonetic explanations
for the existence of those patterns. The phonologization approach thus liberates the
categorical phonology from the need to reproduce in synchrony the phonetic naturalness
sound patterns will acquire in diachrony one way or another.
The term “positional neutralization” comes to us from Steriade’s influential 1994
paper ‘Positional neutralization and the expression of contrast’, and refers to the class of
neutralizations termed “structurally conditioned” by Trubetzkoy (1969: 235-241),
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