Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

X ms of duration (formalized as e.g. Kirchner’s [+ partially long]), we would avoid
having to arbitrarily stipulate that long vowels, initial vowels, closed syllable vowels and
phrase-final vowels all fail to undergo the process, since all these could be marked
[+partially long]. This approach does simplify the description of the process, and brings
its original phonetic motivation directly into its description, but in so doing it
oversimplifies the specific characteristics of the implementation of the process, and thus
obscures its true nature. As noted above, in Uyghur all underlying long vowels fail to
undergo the raising process, despite the fact that they durational distinction between these
and underlying short vowels has been largely effaced with time. Furthermore, the process
does apply to new long vowels created by compensatory lengthening, despite the fact that
they must clearly be over whatever subphonemic durational threshold we take [+partially
long] to encode. In other words, the process has been phonologized. It applies
categorically word-internally, without regard for matters of phonetic duration. The
exceptional final syllables, on the other hand, do not share this property. They are said to
optionally undergo raising non-prepausally, which I take to mean that raising applies to
them only in such case as they actually are under some minimum durational threshold,
which is to say, it applies gradiently. We are dealing, in other words, with two distinct
processes, one of which is responsive to the realization of phonetic duration, the other of
which is not. That the latter includes a list of arbitrary-seeming exceptions to its
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