Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

narrowly around [], such that in neither structural position would we find significant
variation in the realization of the vowel /a/, but in the two positions the narrow target
windows for the relevant phonetic dimensions would be completely distinct. In such a
system stressed /a/ would be [a], while unstressed /a/ would be [] regardless of
perturbations in the durations of the vowel in question. It is common in the literature to
find allophonic processes such as this one, in which the two allophones vary little and
have little or no overlap, referred to as “categorical” processes, as opposed to gradient
processes in which a continuum of realizations is attested between the two extremes,
most likely as function of contextual factors such as duration. This study will avoid this
usage completely. Allophonic processes in which allophones have distinct distributions
with little overlap will be assumed to have one narrowly specified phonetic target in one
structural position and another narrowly specified phonetic target in the other. Gradient
processes describing continua of realizations between two points will be assumed to be
the result of loose specification of a single target for both positions, or potentially even
partially overlapping but separate target windows in the positions in question. The term
“categorical” will be reserved solely for processes affecting the phonological category
membership of the entities in question.
At this point, however, the distinction between the phonetic and the phonological
becomes more tenuous. What exactly is the difference between a phonetic process
24