Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

and low vowels. To review, the problem was that it is not clear whether mid and low
vowels once contrasted in unstressed syllables in East Slavic, but later fell together, or
whether the contrast between the mid and the low vowels only ever emerged in stressed
syllables to begin with, such that diachronically at least, no vowel reduction per se ever
took place.
Recall that in Belorussian immediate pretonic syllables /e, a, o/ are realized as
[a], while in other unstressed syllables the neutralization is the same, though the resulting
[a] undergoes some qualitative reduction, causing Czekman and SmuΩkowa (1988) to
symbolize it as [α], perhaps IPA []. Here again the ambiguity in the system arises: Since
some raising toward schwa does in fact occur, should this be considered contrast-
enhancing or prominence-reducing vowel reduction? Has non-first pretonic /a/-/o/-/e/
been raised enough to count as raised, or is it still peripheral, despite the raising?
Of course, the problem still remains that the Belorussian first pretonic syllable
does, according to Czekman and SmuΩkowa, actually contain phonetic [a], so at least
there the contrast-enhancement analysis seems solid. For the phonologization approach,
however, this could be a problem, since if the low vowel is not forced by durational
pressures to raise, becoming perceptually ambiguous with the reduced variants of the mid
vowels, then it is not clear why neutralization takes place to begin with.
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