Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

since the majority of phonological initial-syllable effects take place at the lexical level.
Smith notes that initial strengthening may ultimately “bolster” the pressure to demarcate
the left edge of the word, but that it is not by itself enough to make initial syllables
phonologically strong positions.
From the point of view of the synchronic modeling of individual phonological
systems, this is entirely correct. Synchronically, initial strengthening is hardly the same
thing as phonological strength. Indeed, given the apparent generality of attestation of the
former, it is likely that languages with specific phonological constraints on word-initial
onset sonority also implement phonetic initial strengthening of prosodic-word or phrase
initial material, such that, for example, a phrase-initial voiceless obstruent satisfying the
phonological constraints will have greater linguopalatal contact, closure duration, and
VOT than its phonological equivalent phrase-internally. Obviously, the grammar of a
speaker of this language must account for the phonological distribution and the phonetic
pattern separately, as distinct regularities, and within that grammar there would be little
reason to imagine that the implementation of the former be necessarily contingent upon
the presence or particularities of the latter.
But this only addresses part of the question. Indeed, where the focus of our
inquiry is on how to account for typological regularities in attested patterns of licensing
asymmetries in initial position, then, as in the cases of stressed and final syllables
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