Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

in chapter 2, however, among the unstressed vowel reduction systems of the world, such
a system seems completely unattested, and with good reason, given the phonetic
motivations behind the development of UVR systems. Were the immediate predecessor
to the Turkic palatal harmony system one in which the soon-to-be-alternating qualities
did not contrast due to reduction, that reduction system would have had to be virtually
unique.
Furthermore, while some featural agreement of stressed and unstressed vowels
can arise in UVR systems, it tends always to be harmony of the same type: either an
unstressed vowel retains its earlier quality when the stressed vowel is of the same quality,
or the unstressed vowel takes on the quality of the stressed vowel entirely, showing
complete agreement 124 . Thus, in Yakan, pretonic /a/ does not reduce to [e] if the stressed
vowel (along with any intervening pretonics) is also [a] (Behrens 1975). In Timugon
Murut pretonic non-high vowels are [o] if the stressed vowel is [o], and otherwise they
are [a] (Prentice 1979). In Russian dialects exhibiting what is known as “assimilative”
vowel reduction, there are systems in which, for example, a first pretonic /o/ will fail to
reduce if the tonic vowel is also /o/, but otherwise will merge with /a/, or in other dialects,
first pretonic /o/ remains [o] unless the stressed vowel is [a], in which case it merges with
/a/ (Chekmonas 1987: 342). It is important to note that in Murut and Russian, where
124 This are also, of course, stress-dependent harmony systems, such as those treated by Majors (1998)
329