Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

1.1.2. Phonetically-driven Phonology
Observations like these form the basis of the influential Licensing-by-Cue theory
advanced by Steriade (1997) and implemented in numerous works of other authors
adopting versions of this approach, such as Bradley 2001, Côté 2000, Crosswhite 2001,
and Zhang 2001. Steriade observes that in positional neutralization patterns, the same
features appear correlated again and again crosslinguistically with the same positions, and
argues furthermore, that this correlation follows from the specific phonetic characteristics
of each position. More precisely, Steriade’s claim is that features are licensed
preferentially in positions in which phonetic conditions make them maximally
perceptually robust, and are likewise eschewed in positions where they would be less
robust perceptually, and hence easily overlooked. It is not then the position itself which
licenses or bans features, but rather the concrete phonetic cues which are important for
those features’ perception. For example, potentially hard-to-perceive laryngeal contrasts,
such as those involving voice, aspiration or glottality could be licensed on stops only in
the presence of release bursts and following CV transitions, wherever those may happen
to occur in a given language. Likewise certain vowel height contrasts, such as mid vs.
high or low, could be permitted exclusively on vowels with sufficient phonetic duration
for their accurate perception. That voiced, aspirated, or glottalized consonants happen to
contrast in one or another structural position within the syllable, or that the vowels with
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