Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

4.6. Summary
In this chapter I have presented evidence from a broad typological survey that
phonological strength patterns involving the vowels of initial syllables are substantially
rarer than previous treatments of the topic suggest. The vast majority of cases, in fact, can
be attributed to a present or past fixed initial stress in the languages in question.
Furthermore, while in this group of languages patterns both of vowel harmony and
surface inventory reduction as in canonical UVR patterns are attested, in the small set of
languages for which initial stress cannot be documented or reconstructed, only harmony
seems to be found.
I have argued that these typological facts are readily accounted for by the
phonologization approach, in that they follow directly from the phonetic profile of initial
syllables crosslinguistically. Robust operation of a process of phonetic initial
strengthening is well-attested on the initial segments within domains, but unlike final
lengthening, its effects in most cases which have so far been investigated do not extent
further into the domain than that initial syllable. Thus, while PN effects involving initial
consonants and absolute word-initial vowels are both quite common crosslinguistically,
PN patterns affecting all initial-syllable vowels at not at all common.
Toward an explanation of why initial-syllable strength effects should appear at all
the, I have demonstrated on the basis of experimental work with Turkish that in a
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