Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

stressed [o], preventing it from being realized low and unround. Indeed, the combination
of the fact that the final syllable is comparatively weaker prosodically than the tonic, and
the fact that whatever rounding was present on the reflex of schwa cannot have been very
great (given its realizations in the daughter languages) makes it tempting to see the
emergence of stressed [o] as an umlaut- or metaphony-like change. In such a scenario, the
already-weak rounding, being realized in a prosodically weak position, is heard instead
on the stressed non-high vowel, and reinterpretation occurs. See the discussion of the
motivations for metaphony above in the section on Pasiego Spanish for various takes on
this phenomenon. If this is the case for Murutic/Dusunic, though, then the entire limited
licensing of [o] in the stressed syllable is the result of the prosodic weakness of the final,
and cannot be considered a final strength effect. Examples follow in (24):
(24) *PAN // in Murutic/Dusunic stressed syllables
a. *PAN tlu > talu ‘three’
*PAN Spat > Kadazan/Dusun apat ‘four’
b. *PMP nm > onom ‘six’
*PMP dmdm > Tatana’ rondom ‘dark’
*PAN gem 82
> gomgo ‘fist’
*PMP depa > lopo ‘fathom’
82 From Blust (1988), meaning ‘grasp in the fist’.
185