Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

vowels in Luganda and Runyambo. Hubbard (1994) provides evidence from a number of
Bantu languages showing significantly greater durations for stem-initial consonants than
for comparable consonants stem-internally. 133 Languages showing this effect included
CiYao and Kikerewe among others 134 (Hubbard 1994: 95, 102). Certain Bantu languages
of the southern zones, such as Chichewa, have regular lengthening of vowels in
penultimate syllables. In some languages, such as Makonde, this has even been analyzed
as a penultimate stress with concomitant UVR in unstressed syllables (Liphola 2001).
What is fascinating here are the attendant changes in the results of Hubbard’s durational
measures for consonants. Specifically, while a first set of measurements makes it appear
that in Chichewa as elsewhere root-initial consonants are significantly longer than root-
internal, measures taken comparing situations in which the root-initial consonant belongs
to either the penult or the antepenult show that in Chichewa consonant strengthening
takes place not in all root-initial syllables, but rather in the onset of the penult, where the
vowel also undergoes significant lengthening. When in the antepenult, the root-initial
consonant is significantly shorter (Hubbard 1994: 148). Now if strengthening of the
penult in the relevant languages, an innovation in the Bantu context, is in fact the
133 ‘Stem’ here in the Bantuist sense of root plus suffixes.
134 Hubbard notes that the effect is less consistent here. Specifically, while it is strong for voiceless
obstruents, it is less so for voiced stops, and actually reversed for sonorants /m/ and /l/. For nasals at least
this is the case in Turkish, and also for Korean (Sun-Ah Jun, p.c.), and is probably explicable along with
other effects increasing the “consonantality” of initial sonorants.
341