Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

The first reduction or neutralization phenomenon I will take up is final vowel lowering, a
neutralization of contrasts more most likely not conditioned by any process of phonetic
reduction in final position. More likely it is the consequence, in fact, of phonetic
strengthening of the type Cho refers to as Sonority Enhancement in English stressed and
final syllables (§3.2.3.1). As such it would be classed among PN patterns with what
Smith (2002) calls Positional Augmentation (see Chapter 4 for details).
Both neutralizing and non-neutralizing vowel lowering is attested in final position
in a variety of languages. Some caution is indicated here of course, as a word-final
inventory of /e, o, a/ out of a word-internal five-vowel system could just as easily be the
result of devoicing and loss of final high vowels as it could of lowering 108 . Some
examples of final lowering (or high vowel exclusion) follow:
(34) Final Lowering
a. Bare (Northern Arawak, Aikhenvald 1996): Bare exhibits utterance-final
diphthongization of the high-vowel /i/ to [ie], particularly under emphasis. Perhaps a
weak example.
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High vowels are especially prone to such behavior due to their brevity and the potential for the closeness
of their constrictions to impede the development of the pressure drop across the glottis necessary for
voicing to begin (Ohala 1993).
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