Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

position in the way that, e.g., retroflexion contrasts are preferentially licensed in
postvocalic position due to the salience of cues for this distinction in that positions (i.e.
VC transitions [Steriade 1999]). In many cases contrasts for which final position is
phonologically strong are not “licensed” in any sense by the phonetic characteristics of
that position 55 . In some cases, such as Pasiego Spanish, those characteristics may even be
detrimental to the perception of the contrast (a fact which one way or another provides
the ultimate motivation for the harmony patterns which may develop there). Further
examples of cases of final syllable phonological strength owing explicitly to final syllable
phonetic weakness are discussed in the section 3.7 below. More often than not this turns
out to be the case in systems where final position alone is the sole licenser of the full
range of contrasts in the inventory. In this sense Hausa, described above, is the exception.
None of the other putative instances of (non-tonal) final syllable strength has this
characteristic. Rather, where final strength is observed at all, it is most often in the form
of which I will call Final Resistance, introduced in the next section.
55 Those conditions may in fact be the ultimate diachronic source of the contrast (as in the Eastern
Andalusian laxing harmony systems in which the lax final vowels of the plural suffix develop from loss of
an earlier word-final /-s/, presumably with the intrinsic periods of breathiness on the preceding vowels
becoming extrinsic thereby (Sanders 1994).
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