Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

duration for /a/~/o/ in this position, but it will certainly be longer than the 90 ms given by
Matusevich (1976) for this vowel in Standard Russian. We might well wonder at this
point just how long a vowel this would need to be to realize the contrast between /a/ and
/o/ robustly. It is by no means obvious that even as mean duration of 90 ms is terribly
impoverished in this respect. Additionally, given that a clear [a] is realized here
consistently, there can be no question of duration pressures causing undershoot of any
kind, so that it not clear why any minimum distance constraints would be violated in the
first place 137 . The problem is that whatever phonetic circumstances gave rise to this
particular neutralization were relevant and operational only hundreds of years ago, when
the neutralization was phonologized 138 . Synchronically, the neutralization simply takes
place when the relevant segments occur in the specified structural positions, regardless of
the phonetic characteristics of vowels pronounced there in synchrony.
Consider also in this connection the case of Seediq. In Chapter Two I presented
an analysis of Seediq UVR, where in posttonic syllable unstressed /e/, /o/, /u/ merge as
/u/. I demonstrated that the source of this pattern is that fact that Seediq stressed /e/
137
It might be possible in the Russian case to derive this result by assuming that the mean realization values
for the duration of unstressed /a/ were calculated over all unstressed syllables, rather than just over first
pretonics. Given that first pretonic and non-first pretonic syllables must have separate durational targets
specified though (the former being substantially longer than the latter), it is not clear why this would be so.
138
Recall that it is still not clear whether the neutralization of /a/ and /o/ in unstressed syllables was actually
a merger historically, or if the two (derived originally form long and short /a/ respectively) rather simply
failed to split everywhere but the stressed syllable. Either way the conditions in question are not relevant to
the synchronic implementation of UVR in Russian.
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