Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

elimination of contrasts in frontness/backness, rounding, or ATR/RTR/pharyngealization
are spottily attested at best, if not utterly non-existent. There are, of course, plentiful
instances in which a front/back contrast is neutralized along with a height contrast, such
as in mergers of /a/ and /e/ as [] (as Steriade 1994: 11 notes for Catalan where the
resulting system is [i, u, ]), but this could hardly be interpreted as a manifestation of the
need to eliminate front/back contrasts from weak positions.
Aside from this, we do find neutralization of front/back contrasts among low
vowels, as in Chamorro (Topping 1969, Steriade 1994, Crosswhite 2001), where in
unstressed syllables /æ/ and // merge as [a]. Given the relatively small acoustic distance
between front and back low vowels, and the corresponding dispersion-based preference
against this contrast in smaller vowel inventories, it is unsurprising that specifically this
front/back pair should neutralize before others. The system of unstressed vocalism in
Chamorro is [i, u, a].
For further reductions of front/back contrasts to occur, it is necessary for the
unstressed inventory to fall below three vowels. Thus, in pretonic syllables in certain
southern Italian dialects such as that of Bari (Loporcaro 1997: 340-341), the only vowel
contrast remaining is between unstressed [] and [a]. This pattern is also in accord with
the crosslinguistic typology of vowel inventories, in which, alongside the famed vertical
vowel inventories of Marshallese or Kabardian, we find no instances of “horizontal
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