Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

truncation of the relevant gestures due to contracted intergestural phasing such that they
fall short of their targets), or to cause certain contrasts to become difficult to perceive
with accuracy. Thus, while the additional duration of final syllables may allow them to
resist processes targeting non-prominent vowels, by itself it is unlikely to lead to a
situation in which the final syllable alone licenses the system’s full vowel inventory,
while all non-final syllables are reduced to some subset thereof. Indeed, even Hausa
(§3.2.2.1) is not unambiguously such a system, with the phrase-internal neutralizations
targeting specifically the short vowels, which by all accounts are by nature short and
variable enough to overlap significantly in casual speech if not subjected to some
additional lengthening. We might then expect other such systems to arise in languages
with non-duration-cued accentual systems and a vowel quantity distinction such as that
found frequently in Indo-Iranian languages like Kurdish or Punjabi, in which the short
vowels are strongly centralized and variable 79 .
3.4. Categorical and gradient effects in Final Strength systems
The preceding sections have presented arguments for viewing the typology of
final strength effects as a consequence of the peculiarities of the implementation of final
lengthening. The phonetics of final lengthening were shown to account for the fact that
79 Such as found in the Volga region Turkic and Uralic languages and Indo-Iranian languages like Kurdish.
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