Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

2.4. A UG-based approach to UVR typology: Crosswhite (2001)
Crosswhite (2001) presents the most comprehensive account of vowel reduction
patterns to date in the generative tradition. An Optimality-theoretic approach to
unstressed vowel reduction, this study seeks to account both for the synchronic
implementation of UVR systems in the constraint-based phonology, but also through the
reranking of constraints or constraint-types, to produce a factorial typology generating all
and only attested patterns of vowel reduction. The assumption that the phonological
grammar must be responsible both for modeling individual competence and for
producing a full accounting of crosslinguistic phonological typology is central to the
program of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993). It is also, I would argue, a
serious mistake. In the following sections I introduce the account of phonological UVR
presented in Crosswhite (2001), and compare its typological predictions to those of the
phonologization model.
In addition to contributing a comprehensive typological survey of vowel reduction
patterns in the languages of the world, Crosswhite (2001) seeks, on the basis of evidence
accrued therein, to divide vowel reduction systems into two major types. These types are
said to differ both in their phonetic motivations and formal implementations, and the
distinction between them for Crosswhite represents the primary typological
73