Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

examples of languages with final-syllable strength, the most straightforward is Hausa,
which is exemplified in the following section.
3.2.2.1. Hausa
Hausa has a vowel inventory consisting of five vowels, long and short, /i, i:, e, e:,
a, a:, o, o:, u, u:/. This complete inventory, however, is reliably distinguished only in final
position. While long vowels are faithfully realized in all positions, the situation is
markedly different for the short vowels. Steriade claims that the feature combination
[round]-[back] among short high vowels is distinctive in Hausa only phrase-finally
(Steriade 1994: 13). As noted above, Hausa has been shown to have robust (though non-
neutralizing) phrase-final lengthening. In phrase-final position, long and short vowels are
realized with identical quality. Short vowels, however, are “cut off by a glottal closure”,
while a long vowel “has longer duration and just dies away” (Carnochan 1988) 45 .
Carnochan (1951) notes additionally that the long vowels are often realized “with breathy
release”, which I will interpret as partial devoicing.
Non-phrase-final short /i/ and /u/ are clearly subject to a great deal of variation in
45 I leave aside here what Newman and Van Heuven show to be a morphologically-restricted third,
intermediate class of vowels: those which are long non-prepausally, but prepausally are realized with the
glottal closure characteristic of short vowels, and a duration in between that of ordinary long and short
prepausal vowels.
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