Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

Chapter 3. Final Syllables
This chapter looks at the range of positional neutralization effects found involving
the final syllables of a prosodic domain. Final syllables present an interesting test case for
theories of positional neutralization for a number of reasons. First and foremost, they
commonly share with stressed syllables the phonetic cue taken by phonologists such as
Steriade to be among the most crucial in licensing vowel contrasts: duration. The
phonetic durations of domain-final syllables are known to be enhanced in many
languages by a process known as final lengthening. For this reason, we might
legitimately expect to find the same types of licensing asymmetries in final syllables as
we found in stressed syllables (Chapter 2).
Secondly, final syllables are also known to bear a particular psycholinguistic
significance during acquisition, a fact which we might expect to make the existence of
licensing asymmetries here all the more likely (Kehoe and Stoel-Gammon (1997).
Indeed, final syllables have been claimed to be strong licensers for vowel quality
contrasts, but not unambiguously so.
Whatever phonological strength effects may be found in final syllables, the right
edge of word and phrase alike are also famously host to segmental weakening effects
such as devoicing, reduction and deletion. This latter class of effects, which has no
counterpart in stressed syllables, introduces a contradiction into the status of final
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