Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

c. Punjabi (Indo-Aryan, Bahl 1957): Short vowels /, , / do not appear before
pause, where they become long.
d. Thaadou (Kuki-Chin, Thirumalai 1972): The mid central vowel // does not
appear in word-final open syllables.
e. *Proto-Austronesian (Blust 2000): No schwa in word-final open syllables.
Among the many modern Austronesian languages exhibiting this trait are Batak (Dairi
dialect, Sumatra, van der Tuuk 1971), Cotabato Manobo (Mindanao, Kerr 1988), Iban
(Sarawak, Omar 1981), and Buginese (S. Sulawesi, Sirk 1983).
The pattern here is immediately evident. In all cases the short vowels disallowed are
either high or mid central vowels, renowned for their brevity, or the set of "short", "lax",
or "reduced" vowels in systems where the long/short contrast is one in which long or full
vowels are not in fact particularly long, but are peripheral, while the short vowels are
centralized and often characterized as “over-short". Thus, in Mari for example,
Crosswhite cites Gruzov's 1960 instrumental study of Standard Mari (and Volga Mari) in
which the average duration for the reduced vowel in standard Mari pretonic syllables is
somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-60 ms, depending on context, while full vowels are
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