Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

schwa in normal speech (1993: 38). In Timugon Murut, then, this reduction must also
have been present. Where the stressed vowel was [o], preceding [] would have
assimilated in rounding to the tonic vowel, while in the presence of other tonic vowels, it
remained []. At some point in its later development, these reduced pretonics must then
have been lengthened, replacing the reduced pretonic non-high vowels with the
unreduced variants found there today. Where the schwa was rounded, the result was [o],
and where it was not, the result was [a]. In this account, rounding simply spreads from a
round tonic vowel to preceding reduced vowels, an unremarkable scenario from the point
of view of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. The appearance of a “bisyllabic trigger” is
purely accidental. Only a stressed [o] is necessary, but this stressed [o] happens only to
be found as the product of the metaphonic assimilation from final [o], as described above.
Note that with respect to the behavior of pretonic syllables, the licensing of [o] in finals
does depend on some additional phonetic prominence. Despite the weakness of this
position relative to the stressed syllable described above, the final must nonetheless have
some additional duration resulting from final lengthening such that it resists reduction the
reduction to schwa which takes place in pretonic syllables. There is, therefore, a final
strength effect in Timugon Murut, but only relative to these reduced pretonics. The
remainder of the distributional restrictions on [o] follow entirely from other factors. The
following illustrates the development of some of the alternations discussed above:
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