Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

equivalent of unstressed vowel reduction seems not to exist. The first comes from Cho’s
characterization of the gestural correlates of English final strengthening. While Cho does
find sonority expansion (essentially, slight lowering) of vowels in final position, he does
not note any of the featural enhancement effects that he describes for accented syllables,
and which were reported by de Jong in his 1995 study characterizing accent as local
hyperarticulation (affecting all dimensions of vowel articulation, such that [i] would be
raised rather than lowered, while [a] would be lowered rather than raised). This would
account for the resistance of final syllables to processes decreasing vowel height, but
would not necessarily make all vowels perceptually more distinct (in fact, see below for
the suggestion that this sonority expansion may in some cases contribute to the
development of the phonological weak licensing capacity of final syllables as well), and
certainly would not make them as able licensers as stressed syllables. High vowels in
these syllables, for example, would be realized lower than their peripheral stressed
counterparts. The resistance to coarticulation Cho describes for final vowels is clearly
relevant here as well in the development of resistance to assimilatory processes as in, for
example, Maltese.
The second reason why final syllables are less robust and consistent strong
licensers than stressed syllables has to do with the level at which the relevant phonetic
strengthening effects take place. In vowel reduction systems, there is a substantial
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