Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

[], or it might be that a phonological change to the input /a/ takes place such that it goes
from [+low], [-high] to [-low], [+high], and is realized as [].
Evidence that the latter is the correct analysis might be susceptibility of the vowel
in question to some phonological process targeting segments specified [+high], or equally
failure to undergo processes targeting all segments specified [+low]. In the absence of
such phonological evidence, however, there is no reason for the linguist or the native
speaker/learner to assume that any categorical phonological process has taken place. A
single phonological entity can then correspond to one set of phonetic targets or two
distinct sets. Two phonological entities corresponding to the same set of phonetic targets,
however, implies neutralization.
A situation in which two phonological entities overlap in a significant percentage
of their realizations may not constitute phonological neutralization, then, but it is
certainly a situation ripe for reinterpretation as such. Where the phonetic distinction
between two categories becomes ambiguous in a large enough percentage of the tokens
of each in a particular structural position, that distinction becomes unstable, and the
likelihood of the phonologization of the phonetic pattern as phonological positional
neutralization increases.
The notion of sound change as reinterpretation based on the listener’s
misperception of the speaker’s intentions has its source in the work of John Ohala
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