Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

generating the necessary alternations or regularities. The Pure Prominence approach sees
strong or weak licensing capacity as an inherent abstract property of a given position
supplied by Universal Grammar, irrespective of language-specific phonetic details. In this
sense it finds an ancestor in approaches to certain tonal and segmental phenomena in
Bantu languages advocated by, e.g. Goldsmith (1982) or Hyman (1987), in which the
designation of a particular syllable or mora with a grid mark or accent meant not the
presence of metrical structure or anything interpretable as phonetic stress, but rather an
abstract higher degree of relative phonological prominence, a prominence which might be
expressed in increased licensing capacity for consonants and vowels or special behavior
of some kind in the system of tone assignment, or some combination of all these. This
approach, of course, need not necessarily bear the Universalist baggage encumbering
later OT-approaches to positional prominence. The fact that the first mora of the stem-
initial syllable in Kukuya bears an accent (reflecting the fact that the verb-stem initial
syllable in Kukuya has, among other things, greater licensing capacity for both onset
consonants and vowels than other syllables - Hyman 1987, Paulian 1974) may be a fact
about Kukuya alone, leaving open the possibility that some other language might single
out this very position as the locus of particular relative weakness of licensing capacity.
Still though, the fact that the same set of positions (initial syllable, stressed syllable, root)
appear again and again as strong licensers throughout the languages of the world, has led
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