Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

internal unstressed syllables in the immediate predecessor to a system like Uyghur.
Within a given speech style or tempo (to the extent that such an entity exists
monolithically over time in connected speech), word-internal unstressed vowels will be
subject to relatively little durational perturbation, comparatively free as they are from the
effects of processes like boundary-adjacent strengthening. Word-final vowels, on the
other hand, will undergo substantial durational variation depending on the position of the
word within the phrase, meaning essentially on the degree of application of the final
lengthening effect. The resulting inconsistency of application of the gradient vowel
reduction process to vowels in word-final position will hinder the process of
phonologization of reduction in that position, giving it a crosslinguistic tendency to
remain gradient there long after reduction is phonologized in other positions within the
word. Note that in Uyghur or Nawuri, the fact that the final syllable undergoes the
reduction or assimilation process only gradiently means that the failure of the categorical
version of that process to apply must be specifically mentioned in the phonology.
This explicit mention of certain structural positions as apparent arbitrary
exceptions to a process is something that proponents of a direct approach to phonetics
such as Kirchner argue is undesirable, and a primary reason for allowing the phonology
to refer directly to the phonetic features that unify all exceptional positions as a natural
class of sorts. In Uyghur then, if we could just say that raising applies to all vowels under
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