Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

(neutralizing) final devoicing processes are generally recognized at the level of the word,
and not the phrase. None of this is problematic from the point of view of
phonologization.
The nature and attestation of initial-segment effects (C and V) are attributable to
the phonologization of phonetic initial strengthening patterns. The phonologization
approach predicts precisely the effects attested, while making the non-existence of
unattested patterns (such as postconsonantal initial-syllable vowel augmentation)
comprehensible as well. This result was obtained in chapter 2 and 3 as well, and it is a
central thesis of this study that regularities in phonological typology are in general best
accounted for from the point of view of phonologization. It may be that these phonetic
effects, sometimes or in part, serve a function related to the psycholinguistic status of
initial material, but it is the specific characteristics of the phonetic processes thus
engendered, and not the existence of the psycholinguistic status per se, which determine
the shape and attestation of the phonologized patterns. An approach relying solely on
restrictions embodied in the synchronic grammar fails to make the connections between
the phonetic patterns and the phonological typology, and so provides both less
comprehensive and less restrictive predictions as to the nature of that typology. Most
current work in generative phonology (and in particular with respect to the centrality of
the factorial typology to work in Optimality Theory) makes the entirely aprioristic
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