Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

moment in the past) fixed initial stress as well. It is therefore not possible in these cases
to say with certainty whether the licensing asymmetries in question are the result of the
initiality of the syllable or the stressedness of the vowel. The relatively small durational
asymmetries characteristic of fixed stress systems crosslinguistically would be unlikely to
result in the types of dramatic reduction processes discussed in the chapter 2. I argue,
however, that smaller durational asymmetries of this sort, together with vowel-to-vowel
coarticulation in languages with a particular morphological structure could result in the
phonologization of precisely the types of harmony processes so frequently proceeding
(synchronically or diachronically) from initial syllables. I also present the results of an
experimental study showing that under certain circumstances even in the absence of
initial stress a small durational asymmetry between the vowels of initial syllables and
those of following syllables may be produced by the process of initial strengthening well-
documented already for domain-initial consonants. Here too then the typology of
positional neutralization effects falls out directly from the phonologization approach.
In chapter 5 I present my conclusions together with a discussion of the enterprise
of phonological typology more generally. Here I compare the phonologization approach
to typological patterning to approaches relying on restrictions on possible systems
encoded in UG. Also discussed are predictions made by the Licensing-by-Cue and Direct
Phonetics approaches to PN in light of the empirical findings presented in chapter two
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