Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

dialects (Mistry 1997), in which vowel nasalization is contrastive everywhere but on
word-final vowels (with denasalization of etymologically nasalized vowels). An
environment with allophonic nasalization of all vowels would clearly be a less-than-ideal
location for the perpetuation of a nasality contrast.
There also exist, however, systems in which word-final position is phonologically
strong for a nasalization contrast on vowels. In these, however, the source is usually
something altogether different. Interestingly, in what is a complication for a theory of
phonological strength effects which seeks to derive the licensing of contrasts from the
cues that make a particular position optimal for the perception of the phonetic features in
question, these strength effects have their origins in the lack of perceptual robustness
characteristic of final syllables.
It has just been demonstrated that phrase-final position may actually be quite a
bad place for the realization of a vowel nasalization contrast. Nonetheless, in Nanai
(Tungusic, Avrorin 1959: 29-32), nasalized vowels appear only in word-final position.
The opposition is contrastive. The source of the nasalized vowels is the deletion of word-
final /n/ with concomitant nasalization of the preceding vowel. In unsuffixed forms there
are thus abundant minimal pairs. Upon the addition of most suffixes, the [n] is restored
and the vowel becomes oral. This is not, however, the case with all suffixes. The
diminutive [-kan/-kn], for example, never conditions the return of a formerly-preceding
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