Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

individual tokens themselves. This result of this generalization (I will call it for simplicity
of exposition the mean realization, though in practice it might not be formalized as such)
allows the grammar to judge that, for example, while a given posttonic /e/ in Brazilian
Portuguese in phrase-final position might exceed even the stressed vowel in duration,
nonetheless for a speaker for whom posttonic raising is phonologized, the fact that the
mean realization calculated over all tokens of posttonic /e/ is below a certain threshold
means that neutralization must apply, final lengthening or no.
Still though, the relation between phonetic duration and neutralization assumed
here is too constraining. For even if generalizing over tokens to find a short enough mean
allows UVR to apply despite individual tokens with durations well sufficient to
countenance realization of whatever contrasts may be necessary, it still must be the case
that a high enough proportion of stored tokens of a vowel in a given position be short
enough the mean realization in fact comes out below the threshold. But this may not
always be the case. Take for example the Russian first pre-tonic syllable described in
Chapter 2. Here /a/ and /o/ are realized as something like [a] or [], depending on the
dialect, the speaker, the speech style, and so forth. In the speech of many Muscovites, the
vowel in question is famously a robust [a], with a long duration frequently exceedingly
even that of the stressed syllable 136 . I have no statistical analyses demonstrating the mean
136 Other dialect speakers often find this feature of Muscovite speech grating, and mock it as a “drawled”
pronunciation.
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