Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

vowel, and phrase-final position), and likewise exactly as far from [a] as durational
restrictions in other cases force it to be.
First pretonic /a, o/ may simply have its own F1 target specification, narrowly
enough defined so as not to be influenced by durational pressures 32 . Another
interpretation of the results above, though, is simply that the durations of first pretonic
vowels never actually got low enough in my experiment to make their influence felt
consistently on F1. Under this interpretation, then, all unstressed syllables share a single
F1 target. First pretonic syllables can now be seen as just one position among several
(absolute initial, phrase-final, hiatus) in which sufficient duration is present that pressure
to raise [a] to [] is not significant. [a] in syllables in which reduction to schwa does take
place share the same F1 target as [a] in the first pretonic syllable. This target window is
wide enough, however, that variation can occur when durational pressures are great
enough 33 .
The scatter plot below in (12) superimposes the results shown above in (10) and
(11), providing dramatic confirmation of the view the above interpretation. Viewing the
results for Degree 1 and Degree 2 reduction contexts together, we can see that F1 values
32 Whether that specification is independent of the specification of stressed /a/, as the literature suggests, or
is in some way just reflecting conditioned variation (window resizing in the terms discussed in Chapter 1)
of the specification for stressed /a/ is a matter to be determined through further empirical inquiry.
33 The assumption of a single target, as discussed in chapter 1, is consistent with the interpretation that
reduction to schwa is not phonological, all unstressed instances of /a/ having the same featural
representation in the phonology. It is not, however, a necessary consequence of that representation.
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