Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

syllable vowel (that which appeared in phrase-final lengthening contexts), meaning in
effect the expiration of the vestigial gradient reduction pattern altogether, even in its last
refuge, the domain-final syllable. In the window model, gradient duration-dependent
reduction is to be modeled as a wide window for the realization of the unstressed vowels,
expressing the looser specification of the height target for the vowel, such that additional
factors such as decreased duration might alter the vowel’s realization significantly. The
phonologization of that reduction meant the introduction of a new, independent target
window for the unstressed vowel, replacing the widened one of the stressed vowel. The
phonologization of final resistance, then, must be seen as a re-narrowing of the target
window for the vowel in question in those unstressed syllables which, like the final, have
not already received independent targets through the phonologization of the reduction
itself. The vowel there is now realized as a largely unreduced instantiation of its
phonological specification regardless of the actual duration of the final syllable.
Assuming an earlier stage of the English system in which final /i/, /o/ and /u/ were
left unscathed by the categorical phonology (did not become phonological schwa as did
their word-internal preconsonantal counterparts), but were subject to gradient qualitative
reduction in the phonetics, the modern situation in which /i/, /o/ and /u/ remain relatively
peripheral in final open syllables is the result of the suspension of that gradient reduction
pattern, which at a still-earlier point must have been operating generally throughout the
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