Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

e considered from a crosslinguistic perspective either monolithically strong or
monolithically weak in terms of their potential to license vowel contrasts. Indeed, they
may exhibit this schizophrenic licensing potential even within a single system, such as in
Nanai, where final syllables are strong for the licensing of nasality, but weak for
pharyngealization contrasts. This is a serious challenge to theories of positional
neutralization which assume that the phonological strength or weakness of structural
positions is specified in Universal Grammar. At best strength or weakness in final
position is a parameter which must be set on a language-specific, inductively-determined
basis. This fact about final syllables also gives us reason to question whether it is truly
necessary for strength or weakness to be predetermined by UG in any other position
either. Given that patterns of strength or weakness will arise in each position through the
phonologization of phonetic patterns occurring there independently of phonological
licensing restrictions, it is not clear what such restrictions in Universal Grammar are
contributing to the situation. Where phonetic patterns are consistently oriented toward a
single perceptual profile, robust or obscure, phonological patterns in that position will be
equally uniform (as in, e.g., stressed syllables). Where the phonetic picture is more
equivocal, however, phonologization will yield a typological range of patterns which is
equally ambiguous, as the facts of final syllables have made clear.
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