Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

energy through raising of the frequencies of the first formant, and a corresponding
lowering of the frequencies of the second formant - the characteristics of a more open
vocalization” 14 . The stressed vowel is very explicitly lowered to merge with unstressed
/a/. This merger makes sense as the result of centralization, whereby less jaw opening for
/a/ and less velar constriction for /â/ brought the two close enough together that
misinterpretations occurred, resulting in loss of the contrast, and neutralization as actual
[].
The rise of the Eastern Bulgarian system becomes clear when viewed in
conjunction with material from other Bulgarian dialects, such as those underlying the
standard language. In Eastern Bulgarian UVR, there are three categorical neutralizations,
yielding a phonological three vowel unstressed inventory. In the standard language, and
most of the western and southern part of the country, however, this is not the case. Wood
and Pettersson (1988) characterized the situation in general terms as follows: “The actual
occurrence of reduction in everyday speech is subject to normative, social, dialect and
morphological constraints. Unstressed /a/ is reduced in all dialects. Complete reduction of
both /e/ and /o/ is limited to eastern dialects, but they are reduced to a varying extent
14 The original reads as follows: The unstressed vowel “se xarakterizira s po-goljama otvorenost na ustnata
kuxina, tâj kato ezikât ima po-nisko polozhenie, i sâotvetno s po-goljama zatvorenost na gârlenata kuxina”.
And further, “V akustichen plan tazi promjana v konfiguratsijata se otrazjava vârxu spektâra v
sâsredotochavane na akustichna energija chrez povishavane na chestotite na pârvija formant, i sâotvetno
chrez ponizhavane na chestotite na vtorija formant - ukazanie za po-otvoren glasezh” (Tilkov 1982: 50).
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