Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

2.5. Vowel reduction in Russian
The system of UVR in contemporary standard Russian is an excellent test case for
the two approaches. Crosswhite treats Russian (like Brazilian Portuguese) as displaying
two degrees of vowel reduction. The first and less extreme of these she analyzes as
contrast-reducing, while the second, more extreme degree of reduction she treats as
prominence-reducing. The treatment of Russian as having two distinct degrees of vowel
reduction is in fact the standard treatment in the Slavic grammatical tradition. Generally,
however, the difference is treated as one of degree, rather than one kind. Crosswhite’s
innovation is treat the two degrees of vowel reduction differing not merely in the vowels
they allow expressed, but in the very substance, both in terms of formal implementation
and phonetic motivation of the reduction process itself.
In what follows, I will lay out the facts of the Russian case. After brief discussion
of Crosswhite’s approach to it, I will present a different account of Russian vowel
reduction. Specifically, on the basis of experimental results to be presented below, I will
argue that there is only one phonological vowel reduction process in Russian: degree one
reduction. Degree two reduction (as in Brazilian Portuguese for some speakers) is an
unphonologized process of duration-dependent raising applying to all unstressed
syllables, affecting those with shorter durational targets more dramatically than those
with longer targets.
88