Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

As noted, while Strength effects in stressed syllables (generally but not always the
result of unstressed vowel reduction) are both common and robust in languages with
duration-cued stress, Final Strength effects seem both less common and when found often
not so unequivocal as their stressed-syllable equivalents. Specifically, Stressed-syllable
Strength effects commonly make the stressed syllable the sole licenser of the entire vowel
inventory in a given word. In the examples of Final Strength given above, on the other
hand, the final syllable is rarely the unique strongest licenser in the word. The strength
effects found there are in fact often best characterized as exceptions to a more general
pattern of neutralization (what I have termed Final Resistance above). Of course, this
distinction may not hold in all cases, and is not meant as a formal or definitional
statement 78 : Indeed, it is often difficult to identify criteria by which to designate one
strong position “primary” and another “exceptional” in this way. In Uyghur, for example,
is low-vowel raising primarily an instance of initial-syllable strength, closed-syllable
strength, or even bimoraic vowel strength (despite the phonetic manifestation of the
vowel length distinction in Uyghur being somewhat ambivalent)?
There are a number of phonetically-based reasons why stressed syllables and final
syllables manifest different types of strength effects, and why the final-syllable
78 In a standard Positional Faithfulness (Beckman 1998) account, in fact, the two would be formally
indistinguishable.
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