Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

word 81 . It is difficult to tell without experimental evidence or a direct positive statement
in a description whether a final resistance effect is truly phonologized in this way at the
phrase-level (or the word- and phrase-levels, depending). Eastern Mari, however, appears
to present a relatively case for being just such a system.
The other option for phonologization of the reduction status of the final vowel or
syllable is the generalization of the variants in the gradient system with the greatest
amount of reduction (the phrase-internal or casual speech realizations). This has the
effect of eliminating the Final Strength effect entirely. This is the situation for those
speakers of Brazilian Portuguese whom Major (1985) describes as having lexicalized the
reduction of word-final mid vowels such that it applies even under conditions of final
lengthening. For such speakers presumably all posttonic vowels are categorically reduced
in this fashion, with finals simply ceasing to be an exception.
The sections above provide a phonetic explanation for the observed differences
between phonological strength effects found in stressed and final syllables, and provide a
81 This account is based on the synchronic description of Hammond 1999, in which unstressed wordinternal
preconsonantal syllables are said to license only the reduced vowel [], while unstressed open final
syllables permit [i, u, o, ]. There is the possibility, however, that this account, and by extension the
diachronic scenario sketched above are irretrievably flawed in the following sense: There is a no small
circularity in Hammond’s account in the reckoning of unstressed vowel distributions. These are determined
by the fact that the only [o], [u] or [i] found in word-internal preconsonantal positions are in syllables said
to bear secondary stress (e.g. [otnd], [motl], etc.). To the best of my knowledge, however, the fact
that these syllables bear lexical secondary stress is determined largely if not solely on the basis of the
failure of the vowels in these syllables to undergo vowel reduction. Impressionistically at least, these
vowels actually seem to undergo a fair bit of gradient reduction nonetheless in ordinary speech, suggesting
that the situation in English is not yet fully phonologized in the first place.
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