Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

quality contrasts. Indeed, for Beckman (1998), the difference between the two is
essentially just whether the language allows multiple linking of vocalic features. It seems
quite plausible that the one type of system might be linked in some way with the other
developmentally, and specifically, that the chain of assimilations imagined to give rise to
systems of vowel harmony would be phonetically quite a bit more plausible were it to
take place across a string of vowels whose quality had already been neutralized by some
other process (as was suggested above for the shift from vowel harmony to vowel
inventory reduction in Ob-Ugrian dialects). If weak positions (e.g. non-initial syllables)
already licensed the appearance of fewer contrasts, and the vowels which did surface
there were of significantly diminished duration, we could imagine they would be more
susceptible to coarticulatory effects from neighboring strong vowels. Rhodes (1999), for
example, observes English reduced vowels undergoing low-level gradient assimilation in
roundness to neighboring back rounded vowels. Certain East Slavic dialects with robust
systems of vowel reduction also display patterns of dissimilation or assimilation
involving the stressed vowel and the first pretonic vowel (see Crosswhite 2001 for an
OT-based analysis some of these systems). Languages with some sort of harmony system
already in place are also known to add new assimilations to pre-existing ones (e.g. the
gradual extension of rounding harmony in the Turkic languages).
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