Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

Given that the vowel in question is derived from the overshort *PAN // along
with what we know about the realizations of this vowel in the modern languages, this
should occasion no surprise, and certainly does not require the assumption of special
prosodic prominence in the final. The opposite, in fact, may be more plausible, in light of
the fact that in the stressed penult, *PAN // becomes TM [a]. This development, central
to the formation of the licensing asymmetry described above, should actually be
understood as a strengthening of schwa under stress, making its realization lower and
longer than in the weaker final syllable. Several examples of changes of this sort, in
Cho’s (2001) phonetic sonority enhancement and the Positional Augmentation of Smith
(2002), have already been exemplified in the previous chapter, and more come in the
discussion of final lowering in 3.6. The heart of the strong licensing capacity of final,
then, originates in the fact that it is prosodically weaker than the tonic, not stronger. The
dependent licensing of [o] in the tonic is the result of an exception to this pattern,
whereby *PAN // > TM [o] if the penult also contains [o]. While such “support”
phenomena commonly account for the failure of certain vowels to reduce (see discussion
of harmony and reduction in chapter 4), it is less usual that a vowel should resist
strengthening due to the presence of an adjacent vowel. Nonetheless, it must be
concluded that the presence of adjacent [o] in the penult is enhancing the perception of
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