Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

monolithic weakening environment. Hock mentions only one case: Vedic Sanskrit. In
Vedic Sanskrit, there is a sporadic tendency for prepausal vowels to be written nasalized.
Hock attributes this to a weakening of the velic closure at the end of a phrase, where the
articulatory organs are returning to the rest position. Hock does not discuss conditions on
the distribution of this nasalization, however.
It is still not easy, unfortunately, to assess the claim that phrase-final position is
generally correlated with weakening of the velic closure gesture from experimental
evidence. Krakow, et al. (1991) (reported in Krakow 1993) presents evidence of a gradual
decline, primarily in stressed syllables, in the height of the velum for oral consonants
over the course of the utterance. Recall, however, that this is roughly parallel to the
findings of Vayra and Fowler for supralaryngeal articulations, findings which also
showed strengthening of these same articulations specifically in word-final unstressed
syllables. If this is truly a position-specific “weakening” pattern for the articulation of
vowels as Hock claims (rather than what could be seen instead as a gradual decline in the
degree of strengthening of gestures in strong positions the stressed syllables), we would
expect it to be especially obvious on unstressed vowels, all the other articulations of
which are well known to be weakened or reduced. What is more, the Krakow et al. study
concerns specifically the position of the velum in the production of oral onset obstruents.
What is measured is velum height, which of course can vary quite a bit without allowing
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