Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

sentences was a real-word trisyllable of Russian, with either medial or final stress (the
pretonic syllables should in all cases escape the effect of final lengthening applied at any
prosodic phrase-boundary marked before the verb). The vowels in target first and second
pretonic syllables were either /a/ or /o/ underlyingly. Syllables were open and had onsets.
The segmental context was non-nasal (following nasality has a clear effect of raising F1
in low vowels in Russian, as pilot versions of this experiment demonstrated). Sentences
were presented in randomized blocks of ten. The speaker was asked to read each block in
a formal style, described as “like a newscaster might”. After a brief pause, the speaker
then repeated the same block of sentences, instructed this time to read at a faster pace.
Blocks were kept small enough that the speaker was able to keep a more or less constant
speech rate throughout each one. Recordings were digitized at 22.050 KHz and analyzed
using the Praat 4.0.2 speech analysis software (Copyright@1992-2001 by Paul Boersma
and David Weenink). Measures of duration for target vowels were taken from linked
spectrographic and waveform displays. Formant measurements were taken using LPC
autocorrelation analysis from the approximate midpoint of the vowel in question where
formant values were as close to steady-state as was achieved in each case. Discarding
tokens containing second-pretonic syllables from which the vowel had actually been
deleted (or effaced beyond capacity for formant measurement), I was left with
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