Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

targets for F1). In environments such as unstressed syllables, however, where duration is
characteristically low, pressure to undershoot the target would increase, resulting in
values closer to lower end of the F1 target window. This situation would imply, however,
that any instance of reduced duration would result in raising, while any instance of longer
duration would see none. We would predict then that in fast speech stressed /e/ too would
raise toward [i], while in slower speech unstressed /e/ should fail to raise. This gradience
of application of reduction is certainly characteristic of the vowels of unstressed syllables
in what I will argue are unphonologized, gradient systems of UVR such as the reduction
of [a] to schwa in Russian non-first-pretonic unstressed syllables. It is less clear,
however, that the same is true of the realization of stressed vowels.
If it is the case that in the UVR language in question stressed /e/ never raises
significantly toward /i/, even in cases where increased speech rate lowers its duration
substantially, the above picture must be revised somewhat. In this case it would be
necessary to assume a narrow target window for parameters connected with the
realization of vowel height in stressed syllables, thereby allowing less contextual
variation. In unstressed syllables, however, the target window for the same phonological
/e/ would be expanded, such that durational changes (for example) would cause
significant variation in the realization of the vowel along the height dimension. Shorter
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