Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

Before turning to the attested cases of licensing asymmetries for vowels in initial
syllables, it should be noted that, by contrast with an entirely processing-based account,
the typological patterning of licensing asymmetries in initial position described above is
entirely predictable from the well-attested phonetic characteristics of initial syllables
alone. The idea that initial syllables are not the locus of phonetic prominence
enhancement is just not accurate. In fact, a phenomenon known as “initial strengthening”
in the phonetic literature is attested in a variety of languages, where it has been seen to
affect only the onset consonants of domain-initial syllables (Byrd 2000, Cho and Jun
(2000), Dilley, Shattuck-Hufnagel and Ostendorf 1996, Fougeron 1999, Fougeron and
Keating 1996, Keating, Cho, Fougeron, and Hsu 1999, Oller 1973 inter alia). The
following section introduces the details of initial-strengthening phenomena.
4.3. The Phonetics of Initial Position
Domain-initial strengthening refers to a set of processes that have been shown to
enhance various aspects of the articulations of domain-initial consonants in a fairly wide
variety of languages, including to date English, French, Taiwanese, and Korean.
Experiments such as those cited just above have documented an increase in the
magnitude of the supralaryngeal gestures associated with initial consonants, assessed
according to the amount of linguopalatal contact involved in the constrictions (measured
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