Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

hence subphonemic durational features must be available to the lexical phonology. This,
however, cannot be right for the following reason: Kirchner ignores Casali’s claim that
centralization applies to word-final vowels only postlexically, while its internal
application is lexical and obligatory/non-rate-dependent. The lexical application, then, is
clearly not conditioned by subphonemic variations in duration, while the postlexical
application seems to be. This, then, is another instance of the categorical application of a
process word-internally, with gradient application word-finally. Additional support for
this view comes from the application of the clearly-lexical rounding harmony. Casali
notes (p. 653, note 4) that in addition to its lexical application, rounding harmony also
applies postlexically across a word-boundary to (postlexically) centralized phrase-internal
word-final vowels. This postlexical application, however, is “optional”, and produces
final vowels of only “an intermediate degree of rounding” (viz. applies gradiently).
Clearly then both centralization and rounding harmony apply both categorically in the
lexical phonology and gradiently in the postlexical phonology. Further proof of the dual
nature of these processes comes from the absolute initial vowels. The exceptionality of
these is clearly due historically to increased duration. Synchronically, however, absolute
initial vowels never centralize even postlexically (p. 655), and hence are never subject to
rounding harmony lexical or postlexical (which is to say, their exceptionality, previously
a function of their phonetic duration, has since been phonologized, such that it is now
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