Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

of the typology of initial-syllable effects from a stage of the language long since ceasing
to exist, an accounting which the largely-irrelevant synchronic state serves only to
obscure.
4.4.2. Other sources of duration in initial syllables
Remarkably, the exclusion of languages with fixed initial stress in synchrony or
diachrony immediately removes from our typology the overwhelming majority of vocalic
initial-strength effects remarked upon in the literature. Still, a few cases, such as Bantu,
cannot be explained in this manner, as there is no evidence that anything like an initial
stress accent ever existed in these languages. But is lexical stress the only possible source
of additional duration in initial syllable vowels? Certainly the literature on initial
strengthening to date has found (to the extent that it has sought) additional duration on
vowels only when these are absolute initial in the word, not preceded by an onset
consonant. Otherwise, no across-the-board lengthening of initial syllable vowels has been
identified experimentally. The nearest thing is found in the Korean experiments of Cho
and Keating 1999, where two of four speakers show increased durations of vowels in
initial #CV sequences, but only after consonants, whose VOT does not increase as a
function of initial strengthening ([n] and tense t, which they transcribe as [t*]). Cho and
Keating speculate on this basis that there is a compensatory relationship in the
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