Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

well-known, for example, that shorter vowels are more likely to devoice than longer
vowels (presumably because the duration and robustness of the necessary vocal-fold
adduction gesture is sufficient to prevent longer vowels being overlapped by neighboring
voiceless segments or falling victim to complete devoicing as a result of decreased
subglottal pressure). Word-final vowels, though perhaps produced without the phrase-
final drop in subglottal pressure, are also produced without phrase-final lengthening.
Without this lengthening and a following phrase boundary, in many languages word-final
vowels can actually be among the shortest possible in the system, making them
susceptible to elision in hiatus contexts or interconsonantal devoicing of the same sort
discussed by Gordon for word-internal vowels. In Major’s study of Brazilian Portuguese
timing patterns (1981), di- and trisyllabic nonsense forms of the segmental shape [lala] or
[lalala] situated in phrase medial contexts were realized (for a single speaker) with the
following durational patterns:
(27) Mean vowel durations in Brazilian Portuguese di- and trisyllables (Major 1981)
token vowel durations in ms
v1 v2 v3
a. /lalá/ 151 222
/lála/ 217 114
b. /lalála/ 138 202 108
/lálala/ 208 122 99
197