Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

final lengthening have detected the phenomenon in a robust and consistent manifestation
only before higher phrase boundaries likewise makes clear the reason why so many of the
Final Resistance patterns do not operate in word-final syllables internal to the phrase.
Though studies of the articulatory properties of final syllable vowels have so far
dealt with only a very few languages, the frequency of occurrence of Final Resistance
effects (in conjunction with the understandable reticence of most grammar writers on this
matter whether the effect is present in the language or not) might suggest that the
articulatory characteristics documented for English and Tuscan Italian final lengthening
might in fact be properties of the phenomenon in general, and hence that most vowel
reduction systems should show at the very least a low-level phonetic version of Final
Resistance. There exist at least two studies of the spectral characteristics of final syllable
vowels in languages with unstressed vowel reduction, however, which show this not to be
the case: Nord’s studies of vowel reduction and duration in Swedish (1975,1986), and
Johnson and Martin’s (2001) study of vowel reduction in Muskogee Creek.
Nord’s studies showed that despite clear application of final lengthening (with
final-syllable unstressed vowels approximating initial-syllable stressed vowels), all
vowels tested (/e/ and /a/ in 1975, /e/, /a/, /i/ and // in 1986) still underwent reduction. It
is, however, worth noting several things about these studies: Firstly, Nord measures only
vowels in closed final syllables, which, as will be shown in the following section, in
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