Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

This account derives palatal vowel harmony in Turkic from a small-scale
durational difference between initial and non-initial syllables, a difference which, while
not enough to cause articulatory difficulties of the type implicated in chapter 2 in the
development of UVR, is nonetheless sufficient to cause a skewing in the perception of
vowel-to-vowel coarticulation, such that a non-initial vowel might be reinterpreted as
agreeing with a preceding initial-syllable vowels in some featural dimension. Note also
however the importance of the role played in this account by root-structure and
morphology. It is significant indeed in light of this that in fact the Altaic, Uralic and
Bantoid languages with initial-syllable strength manifest as vowel harmony all have
primarily mono- and disyllabic roots, suffixing morphology 132 , and stress (if any) not
strongly cued by duration. It is possible that a similar account could be viable for others
of these cases as well.
4.5.4. Bantu
Turning now to a case of initial syllable strength for which past or present initial
stress is clearly not a potential explanation, it is possible, given the lack of duration-cued
stress in most Bantu languages (and certainly in the proto-language), that the same
pattern of initial strengthening observed in Turkish is or was active in Bantu, and could
132 Any prefixes being less closely integrated into the stem phonologically than the suffixes.
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