Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

part of their duration 107 . This is true regardless of the preceding consonant’s identity,
though after nasals it is stronger. It is also stronger, for whatever reason, following
palatalized consonants. Stressed vowels for the most part nasalize over less of their
duration than unstressed vowels (Krakow 1993: 102-105 reports also experimental
studies on the effect of stress on velum position, in which for one speaker at least low and
high vowels had a lower velum position when stressed than when unstressed. For another
speaker, however, high vowels had a higher velum under stress, while for low vowels the
velum was lower - suggesting local hyperarticulation of sort documented by de Jong
1995). The effect is non-neutralizing, as Russian lacks contrastive vowel nasalization.
This pattern is also attested in Cherokee (which has an underlying nasal //), in
which all vowels are nasalized prepausally (Walker 1975, Whalen and Beddor 1989).
Likewise Aikhenvald (1996: 512) lists the following languages as having the areally-
common feature of “nasal pause” (word- or phrase-final vowel nasalization): Pirahã
(Mura-Pirahã), Irantxe (affiliation uncertain), Rikbaktsa (Macro-Gê), Xeta (Tupí-
Guaraní), Assuriní (Tupí-Guaraní), Tapirape (Tupí-Guaraní). She notes phonetic
nasalization utterance-finally in Jarawara (Arawá).
These latter systems may provide evidence supporting the phrase-final phonetic
weakening hypothesis, in that they affect all the vowels of the relevant system, while the
107 As, perplexingly, are vowels realized between two palatalized consonants.
236