Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

If the initial-stress reconstruction is wrong, on the other hand, and Proto-Turkic had only
some degree of phonetic initial strengthening (like Turkish today), then we are still
dealing with a relatively small durational difference between the vowels of initial and
non-initial syllables. We would not expect such a system to yield the necessary contrast
neutralizations either. There were in fact reductions affecting vowels in non-initial
syllables in Turkic. In Proto-Turkic initial syllables, a complete inventory of long and
short vowels were contrasted (Róna-Tas 1998: 69-70, Johanson 1998: 90-91). In non-
initial syllables of the root short vowels contrast with “reduced” vowels, these latter
derived from earlier short vowels and ultimately subject to syncopation or reduction to
schwa depending on the syllabic environment. There is no reason, however, to think that
unreduced vowels in non-initial syllables were especially durationally impoverished, but
they were subject to palatal harmony nonetheless.
More damning though for the reduction-first hypothesis is the following: Recall
that Turkic vowel harmony involves the neutralization of frontness/backness distinctions,
which is to say, quality contrasts along the F2 dimension. In order to derive this state of
affairs from an earlier system of vowel reduction, then, we must imagine that Pre-Proto-
Turkic had a reduction system allowing a full range of contrasts in initial position, but
neutralizing all F2 contrasts in non-initial syllables while retaining three contrastive
heights (assuming the non-initial syllable inventory of Róna-Tas 1988: 70). As elaborated
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