Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

In Hausa, then, the domain-final syllable is actually the sole position licensing the
full array of contrasts available in the language. All other positions allow the realization
of only a subset of those contrasts, making this essentially the final-syllable analogue of
stress-based vowel reduction. Yet, interestingly, such cases are far from the norm. In fact,
uncontroversial instances in which this is the case irrespective of the placement of stress,
and in which the phonetic source of the pattern is clearly the additional duration supplied
by final lengthening are few and far between. Steriade’s inclusion of Pasiego Spanish in
her list of such systems is illustrative in this connection.
3.2.2.2. Pasiego Spanish
Pasiego Spanish (Penny 1969, McCarthy 1984, Flemming 1993, Sanders 1994,
Dyck 1995, inter alia), as Steriade notes, does indeed allow a contrast between tense and
lax vowels only in final syllables. More specifically, [tense] and [lax] are contrastive only
for high back vowels in absolute word-final position 47 . Whenever the lax -U suffix
appears, however, all preceding vowels in the word are realized as lax as well, a process
usually analyzed as a right-to-left laxing harmony 48 .
47 Still more specifically, the only underlyingly lax vowel in the language is in the lax /-U/ suffix of
masculine singular count nouns. The suffix for masculine mass nouns is a tense /-u/, raised from an earlier
/o/ to contrast with the now-lax original /u/ of the count-noun suffix. I follow here the transcription of lax
vowels with capital letters used in McCarthy (1984). Penny (1969) marks lax vowels with an acute accent
(e.g. -ú vs. -u), disturbingly reminiscent of tone or stress. Questions concerning the actual phonetic
realizations of the lax vowels would make use of IPA symbols somewhat arbitrary.
48 In fact, the domain of this harmony is actually the clitic group, which Penny calls the “syntagma”.
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