Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

cases at the time of development of the relevant licensing asymmetries the languages or
language families in question had stress fixed on the initial syllable.
Proto-Finno-Ugric is generally thought to have had both initial stress and a form
of palatal harmony, and indeed the overwhelming majority of modern Finno-Ugric
languages have either initial stress or some obvious derivative synchronically as well
(Abondolo 1998, Sammallahti 1988) 118 . To the extent that we wish to reconstruct Proto-
Altaic at all, this is generally done with fixed initial stress. Poppe reconstructs an
“expiratory accent” on Altaic word-initial syllables, generalized from the reconstruction
of the same in the Mongolian, Tungusic and Turkic parent languages (Poppe 1960:143-
147). Li (1996: 20-21) notes that Poppe’s characterization of Tungusic stress as fixed
initial is too categorical as concerns the modern languages, though the reconstruction
seems solid enough.
Most Dravidian languages are also characterized by initial stress or some obvious
derivative thereof (e.g. default initial with attraction to heavy syllables further right), and
fixed initial stress is assumed for the proto-language as well (Zvelebil 1970: 40). This
accent, like that assumed for Mongolian, Tungusic, Turkic, and Uralic, was probably not
strongly duration-cued like that of Russian or English, but this does not mean that a
118
The initial stress in certain Uralic languages, Ob-Ugrian in particular, in which earlier harmony systems
have ceased to operate, creates the appearance of the UVR systems of the otherwise unattested type in
which front/back or round contrasts are neutralized in non-initial syllables. See chapter two for discussion.
302