Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

strengthened significantly, while vowels in domain-final closed syllables and vowels in
domain-initial syllables with onsets undergo lengthening to a much lesser degree (or in
the case of the latter, in fact, at least in English, do not do so at all. Again, see chapter 4).
All this is not to say, of course, that Final Strength effects in both closed and open
syllables could never arise in a system. Indeed, the fact that vowels in final closed
syllables do lengthen, if perhaps somewhat less, suggests that the phonologization of non-
reductions owing to the phonetic length in both syllable types should nonetheless be
possible. From the phonetic point of view, we would merely expect such systems to be
relatively less common, which is clearly the case. Ultimately, the durational asymmetry
itself may be found only in certain languages, with other languages implementing final
lengthening differently. One study by Berkovits (1993), in fact, of Israeli Hebrew,
suggests precisely this. In this study Berkovits demonstrates that vowels in Hebrew
undergo lengthening of equal magnitude in both closed and open final syllables. In both
final and non-final contexts, however, the vowels in the open syllables are longer than the
vowels in closed syllables by a mean 11 ms.
While the phonetic features associated with final lengthening are clearly better
suited to account for the patterning of Final Strength effects than an appeal to the
psycholinguistic status of final syllables, I should emphasize that this does not necessarily
mean that psycholinguistic status plays no role at all here. It is conceivable, for example,
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