Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

(passim, but especially 1981 and 1993a.). On Ohala’s conception of sound change,
ambiguous phonetic realizations carry with them the possibility of changes in
phonological representations. Briefly, a speaker utters a string /AXC/ - [AXC]. If the
phonetic realization here is ambiguous, such that the distinction between it and a
realization [AYC] of string /AYC/ is not perceptually robust, a listener may hear the
token of [X], but misperceive it as [Y] due to their perceptual similarity. Believing the
speaker to have intended to utter [Y] as a realization of /Y/, the listener then sets up a
potential alternate realization of the string in question as /AYC/. In this particular context
then, the contrast between /X/ and /Y/ has been neutralized. A simple example would be
the development of umlaut-like vowel fronting such that /uCi/ becomes /yCi/ (or yC). In
Ohala’s schema, the speaker, with a UR of /uCi/, produces the coarticulated sequence
[uCi] with significant fronting of the /u/. The listener then fails to attribute the fronting he
or she hears to the influence of the following front vowel, hearing instead [y], and
believing this to be the speaker’s intended pronunciation, constructs a new representation
for the form in question: /y/. If the language in question already contrasts /u/ and /y/
underlyingly, this results in the neutralization of the contrast between these in the position
in question.
Hyman (1976) presents a model of phonologization in which he distinguishes
three distinct stages of development. Phonologization in this view is conceived of as the
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