Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

the patterns. Final resistance was shown to be often phrase-level only and gradient in its
operation. It is also targets in the vast majority of cases only vowels in open final
syllables, a fact following directly from phonetic details concerning the domain of
application of final lengthening. A non-phonetically-oriented approach to PN patterns in
final position has no way of accounting for any of the typological generalizations drawn
here.
As for phonological weakness, neutralization patterns targeting specifically
domain-final material were shown to exist, a fact which is wholly contradictory from the
point of view of the foregoing discussion of final strength and phonetic enhancement. In
addition to these trends, however, final position also hosts a number of phonetic patterns,
the effect of which is ultimately a decrease in the perceptual robustness of domain-final
material. These patterns include drops in pitch and intensity correlated with lowered
subglottal pressure, devoicing, non-modal phonation such as breathiness or creak, and
even potentially nasalization. Prominent instantiations of various combinations of these
tendencies can interfere with the accurate perception of vowel contrasts in domain-final
position, leading to the phonologization of neutralizations specific to that position. This
combination of factors contributing at once to increases in phonetic prominence and
perceptual obscurity is the source of the phonological ambiguity of final position with
respect to the typology of positional neutralization. Because of this, final syllables cannot
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