Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

The realization of */a/ as [a] in the stressed syllable can be seen above in (21)
(e.g. tanom - to plant). Adding to the asymmetry, however, */a/ is also realized as TM [o]
in final syllables of a certain shape. Since the most regularly attested of these seems to be
word-final /a/ (and since a > [o] here makes little sense as a final strength effect), this
appears to be the result of a final reduction process such as those discussed in 3.6.5.2, a
hypothesis strengthened by Kroeger’s (1993: 38) observation that in Kimaragang, there
are few vowel-final words, and what final non-high vowels ([a], [o]) there exist are
realized with a “slight breathiness or aspiration”. The regularity of the change in some of
these environments (e.g. /_y#) is still uncertain, and /_h# could simply be the result of an
earlier loss of final [h], leaving /a/ final:
(25) *PAN /a/ > [o] in Timugon Murut posttonic syllables
a. /_# *lima > limo ‘five’
*duSa > duo ‘two’
*kita > kito ‘see’
*tuba > tuo ‘fish poison’
*mata > mato ‘eye’
b. /_j# *PMP m-atay ‘to die’ > patoy ‘die
*PMP sakay-an ‘vehicle, ride in’ > sakoy ‘mount, ride’
c. /_h# *qumah > umo ‘cultivated field’
As for the pretonic syllables, the right-to-left harmony exhibited in Timugon
Murut makes most sense in light of facts from other related languages, such as
Kimaragang, in which Kroeger notes that pretonic /a/ and /o/ both “tend to reduce to
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