Vowel reduction in Russian: No phonetics in phonology

Much recent work in phonology concentrates on the role of sonority in the phenomenon of vowel reduction, capitalizing on two facts: that reduction involves raising and/or shortening and that higher vowels and schwa are normally interpreted as having low sonority. This paper presents a different appr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of linguistics 2012-11, Vol.48 (3), p.521-571
Main Author: IOSAD, PAVEL
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Consonants
Descriptive studies and applied theories
Grammar
Humaniora: 000
Humanities: 000
Language acquisition
Lexical stress
Linguistic theory
Linguistics
Linguistics: 010
Markedness
Modeling
Neutralization
Phonetics
Phonology
Phonology phonetics relationship
Pronunciation
Reduction (Phonological or Phonetic)
Russian language
Russian language: 028
Russisk språk: 028
Sonority
Speech duration
Språkvitenskapelige fag: 010
Syllables
Syntax
Theoretical linguistics
VDP
Vowel
Vowels
Zoll, Cheryl
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Summary:Much recent work in phonology concentrates on the role of sonority in the phenomenon of vowel reduction, capitalizing on two facts: that reduction involves raising and/or shortening and that higher vowels and schwa are normally interpreted as having low sonority. This paper presents a different approach to vowel reduction in Standard Russian. It is proposed that the apparent sonority-driven effects in Russian are epiphenomenal. In particular, reduction to schwa is outside the domain of phonological computation in Russian, being an artifact of reduced duration. Other types of neutralization arising in vowel reduction are potentially amenable to a sonority-based analysis, but I argue that current approaches to sonority-driven reduction suffer from representational shortcomings. When these shortcomings are rectified, however, sonority is unnecessary as an explicit factor in vowel reduction: standard markedness mechanisms suffice to explain the data.
ISSN:0022-2267
1469-7742
DOI:10.1017/S0022226712000102