Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

only three vowel qualities, [i, , u]. Systems with these particular inventories in stressed
and unstressed positions are fairly common (particularly within Romance). We find the
same seven-to-five inventory reduction in stressed and unstressed syllables in Berguener
Romansh (Kamprath 1987: 52-54), posttonic syllables in Brazilian Portuguese ((Major
1981, 1985, Nobre and Ingemann 1987, Simões 1991, Wetzels 1992), and unstressed
syllables in South Russian dialects (Flier 1978). Equally common are reductions from
seven-vowels to five as in Standard Italian (Vincent 1988b), or Loniu (Austronesian -
Admiralty Islands, Hamel 1994), and of five vowels to three, as in Eastern Bulgarian 8
(Stojkov 1993), Standard Belorussian (Czekman and SmuΩkowa 1988), or posttonic
syllables in Seediq (Austronesian - Atayalic, (Asai 1953, Li 1977, Li 1980, Holmer
1996). The fact that these same canonical inventories appear again and again in the strong
and weak positions of systems of unstressed vowel reduction is good news for dispersion-
based theories of vowel inventory construction (Liljencrants and Lindblom 1972,
Flemming 1995, 2001). The same perceptual demands for maximal dispersion of vowels
within the vowel space appear to be operative in constructing inventories of unstressed
vocalism as have been argued to govern selection of full inventories (Flemming 2001).
Interestingly, however, while stressed and unstressed inventories are remarkably
8 Actually six vowels to three. See below.
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