Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

Another consideration in the Benue-Congo cases of initial-syllable strength
effects is the morphological status of the initial syllable. In the cases of the Bantoid Tiv
(Pulleyblank 1988) and the Ogoni Gokana (Hyman 1982) cited by Steriade 1994, the
initial syllable which determines the specifications of [high], [low], and [round] (Tiv) and
[nasal] (Gokana) of the vowels of following syllables is the stem-initial syllable of the
verb. This syllable is also historically the root in both cases, with following syllables
being suffixes etymologically at least, though probably not analyzably so in all cases in
synchrony (Hyman, p.c.). It is not clear whether it is the psycholinguistic status of the
root which allows it to license more contrasts than do affixes, or if this too can be
ascribed to phonetics (through the weakening of segmental material in affixes as they
become increasingly bound prosodically to roots or stems). In this case it may well be a
combination of both, or the phonetic effect may be a direct consequence of the
psycholinguistic facts. Whatever the reason, it quite possible that the status of the initial
syllable in these cases as the etymological verb root has more to do with the development
of the relevant licensing asymmetries than does the initialness of syllables in question per
se.
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