Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

Another way in which the phonetics can create the input to phonologizations
resulting in stressed-unstressed syllable licensing asymmetries is through the durational
and articulatory enhancement of the stressed syllables. Cho (2001) presents articulatory
evidence from English that the presence of pitch accents on vowels results in their
strengthening not only in duration and resistance to vowel-to-vowel coarticulation, but
also in what Cho calls sonority enhancement, whereby lip and jaw position are both more
open, and in many cases tongue position is lower as well (but see de Jong 1995 for
somewhat contradictory results). These enhancements, taken together, can account for
lengthenings, lowerings, and diphthongizations of stressed vowels, potentially resulting
in the emergence of new contrasts in those positions (assuming that some comparable
stressed vowels fail to undergo the process, or enter the language only after the process
has taken place).
That it is specifically duration or lack thereof, and not “stressedness” per se, that
is responsible for the licensing asymmetries found in stressed and unstressed syllables is
underscored by cases in which vowels of one or another degree of stress are nonetheless
subject to reduction due to the failure of that stress to impart any additional duration to
the vowel in the syllable it is realized on. Thus, in Italian, only vowels under primary
stress are immune to vowel reduction, while secondarily-stressed vowels undergo the
neutralization of unstressed high and low mid vowels to [e] and [o] just as would an
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