Dissertation - Michael Becker

(24) Backness of stem-final vowel n % alternating−back 1495 49.5%+back 1507 60.3%Just like vowel height, the correlation with vowel backness is not uniformly distributedin the lexicon. As seen in (25), the correlation with backness is small (at most 13%) forlabial-, coronal- and dorsal-final nouns. A robust correlation with backness is seen in Ù -final words of all sizes. Averaged over the 191 Ù -final nouns, the proportion of alternatingnouns is 30% higher following a back vowel relative to a front vowel.(25) CVC CVCC CVCVC−back +back −back +back −back +backptÙk12 18 4 12 113 13533% 22% 75% 75% 96% 87%18 23 34 45 673 4628% 4% 26% 13% 16% 19%11 12 10 8 66 8414% 21% 40% 81% 50% 81%19 24 25 26 510 6588% 0% 16% 4% 90% 92%In contrast to the four properties that were examined until now (size, place, height andbackness), a phonological property that has but a negligible correlation with the distributionof voicing alternations is the rounding of the stem’s final vowel (26).(26) Rounding of stem-final vowel n % alternating−round 2524 54.6%+round 478 56.4%27