Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

Distance constraints outrank the relevant Maintain Contrasts constraints, and durational
targets and constraints against articulatory effort are demanding realizations of [e] and [i]
or [o] and [u] closer to one another than Minimum Distance would allow, the only viable
solution is the neutralization of contrasts. By merging /e/ - /i/ as /i/ and /o/ - /u/ as /u/, we
will violate the Maintain Contrasts constraint, but Minimum Distance will be satisfied, as
will the duration and effort constraints. This approach, in essence, sees neutralization as
the consequence of two contrasting entities being forced so close together in phonetic
space by realizational constraints that in the end the contrast must be abandoned rather
than realized in so perceptually non-robust a fashion.
Now here the phonologized versions of UVR processes present a fairly obvious
problem common to all direct-phonetics models, but one that is by no means
insurmountable. The problem generally is in the variability of vowel durations. If it is
necessary to specify a particular durational minimum below which a contrast is best left
undeployed, there will always be some subset of all the tokens of a target string which for
whatever reason (segmental context, speech rate, phrasal position, etc.) exceed that
minimum, and also some subset of all the tokens of non-target (e.g. stressed) strings
which fall below it. Turning specifically to Flemming’s model, what the scenario
sketched above predicts is a distribution for the realization of mid vowels in which, as
duration decreases, the vowels are raised proportionally along with it, until a certain point
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