Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

Each instance of the failure of reduction to schwa in non-first-pretonic syllables is
explicable as a function of the phonetic duration assigned to the vowels in those syllables.
The additional duration in each of the above cases is furthermore either part of a well-
documented crosslinguistic trend (initial strengthening, final lengthening), or simply falls
out from the nature of the sequence being realized ([a.a]). There is nothing unique to
Russian phonetics or phonology about any of these cases. The phonetic account of
Degree 2 reduction presents a unified picture of all the cases of the failure of reduction,
deriving them all from additional duration assigned in the phonetics.
The following can be said thus far: Degree 1 reduction, the merger of /o/ and /a/
in unstressed syllables is phonological. It is neither duration-dependent nor gradient in its
application. Degree 2 reduction, the realization of /a/ as [], however, is as yet
unphonologized. The facts cited above concerning the failure of reduction to schwa
suggest that it is duration-dependent. There is also no independent phonological evidence
that reduction to schwa must take place in the phonology rather than in the phonetics (i.e.
there are no other phonological processes which interact with reduction to demonstrate
that schwa must be featureless, or even that it must not be specified [+low]. The next
section presents experimental results which confirm this picture of Russian UVR.
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