Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

neutralization such that some combination of these features (i.e. voicing, aspiration,
glottalization) can be freely contrasted in syllable onsets, but see their ability to contrast
neutralized in syllable codas (see Steriade 1997 for details and analysis). Phonetic facts
are often enough implicated more or less uncontroversially in the explanation of the
diachronic development of such systems. In coda position, for example, the lack of a stop
burst or CV transitions following the consonant may make the features in question more
difficult to perceive, and hence more prone to effacement. C-place features are known to
suffer similarly under the same conditions. Less obvious, however, is the extent to which
this phonetic information is necessary or desirable in a synchronic model of positional
neutralization.
1.1.1. Pure Prominence
Some approaches to positional neutralization are largely unconcerned with the
phonetic motivations for the alternations they model (Beckman 1998, Zoll 1997, inter
alia). While these Pure Prominence models differ from one another in substantive and
principled ways, they share the basic assumption that positional licensing restrictions are
best expressed in the grammar through constraints which have reference to a fixed set of
phonological features and positions. Strong and weak positions are essentially listed as
such, and are freely combinable with phonological features to produce constraints
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