Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

Nawuri, Shimakonde, and Bonggi. Showing strength of both closed and open syllables
were only Yakan, Murut (to the extent that this is an instance of final strength at all), and
apparently the Berestja area dialect of Ukrainian (Shevelov 1979). To this can be added
the Polish dialect of the city of Niemirowa nad Bugiem, in which pretonic syllables
contain only [i, a, u], while (fixed penultimate) stressed syllables and final syllables (open
and closed) contain [i, e, a, o, u] (Janiak 1995). Note however that three of four of these
examples have fixed penultimate stress, making it ambiguous whether we have resistance
to reduction of final syllables specifically due to final lengthening, or rather failure to
reduce of posttonic syllables in general (all of which happen to be final). This
cooccurrence of fixed penultimate stress and syllable-structure independent Final
Resistance may well not be accidental. In contrast to the Polish spoken in the city of
Niemirowa nad Bugiem, the local Ukrainian dialect has mobile stress and Final
Resistance to vowel reduction in open syllables only. Niemirowa is located in the
Berestja dialect region to which Shevelov attributes resistance to vowel reduction in all
final-syllables. At least this dialect, then, is an exception. It is tempting to ascribe any
Final Resistance of the type Shevelov describes in Berestja Ukrainian to the influence of
the Polish of the area which apparently also shows Final Resistance of this type, and has
penultimate stress. In the absence of further information, however, this is purely
speculative.
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