Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

consistently on height. It is even worse for this theory that instances of UVR systems
based on precisely the contrasts Steriade identifies as most difficult perceptually
(front/back, round, ATR) should be all but completely unattested in the languages of the
world. Steriade 1994 actually notes the absence of UVR systems based on the elimination
of roundness or ATR contrasts, but judges it to be an accidental gap. As argued above,
however, given the phonetic factors underlying vowel reduction, there is nothing
accidental about it. In sum, either Steriade and Kaun are wrong, and height contrasts are
actually less robust perceptually than contrasts of palatality, roundness, and ATR, or
there is more to vowel reduction than just the elimination of difficult contrasts from
contexts where duration is insufficient for their accurate perception. Crosswhite’s
treatment of vowel reduction does not account for the fact that the virtually all UVR
systems deal in neutralizations of either height, nasalization or quantity. By contrast, this
striking pattern is a primary prediction of the phonologization approach to the typology
of UVR systems.
The second type of vowel reduction system Crosswhite introduces, prominence-
reducing UVR, is of a different character altogether. While the purpose of contrast-
enhancing reduction is to remove difficult-to-perceive contrasts from positions in which
they are likely to be misperceived (such that there is little point troubling oneself to
deploy them in the first place), the point of prominence reduction is said to be the
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