Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

vowels come to approximate one another’s positions creating perceptual ambiguity only
along those dimensions. Since phonetic ambiguities arise primarily in the dimension of
vowel height, it is precisely height contrasts which will be lost to the phonologization of
UVR. Since contrasts in frontness/backness, rounding, or ATR are not dependent on
longer durations articulatorily to the same extent as height contrasts are, we would not
expect vowels to develop ambiguous realizations to the same extent, except under more
extreme durational pressures. In such situations though, height contrasts will be
abandoned as well, yielding the typological picture presented above in 2.1, whereby, for
example, front/back contrasts may be lost in addition to height contrasts in unstressed
syllables, but will not be lost instead of them. That other duration-sensitive contrasts such
as those of nasalization and quantity should also be sensitive to the stressedness of the
syllable in which they appear is predicted by the phonologization model in the same way.
As the cases of Sosva Mansi and Tromagan Khanty illustrate, however, the
phonologization approach predicts only the evolutionary improbability of the disfavored
UVR patterns. Because of its diachronic take on typological patterning, however, should
patterns of this sort nonetheless come to exist through channels other than straight
phonologization of duration-dependent phonetic patterns, the phonologization model in
no way prejudices the phonology against their implementation.
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