UMass Phonology Group Meeting                              April 23, 2004  

ABSTRACT

Phonetics and Phonology in Unstressed Vowel Reduction: Russian and Beyond

Jonathan Barnes
Boston University

Phonological vowel reduction (VR), the neutralization of vowel contrasts
in unstressed syllables, has been central to recent debate surrounding the
phonetics-phonology interface (Barnes 2002, Crosswhite 2001, Flemming
2001, inter alia). At issue is the role of phonetic vowel duration in the
representation of VR in the phonological grammar. Contemporary Standard
Russian has long been a proving ground for theories of VR, traditionally
analyzed as realizing reduction in two distinct degrees: The first degree
(VR1) is found in the immediately-pretonic syllable, and the second (VR2)
in most remaining unstressed syllables. Simplifying somewhat, while
stressed syllables in Russian contrast five vowels [i, e, a, o, u], VR1
collapses that to [i, a, u], neutralizing [a] with [o] and [e] with [i],
while VR2 replaces [a] with schwa. Recent analyses differ in the precise
mechanisms by which they derive these two degrees of reduction, but what
all accounts share is their assignment of both degrees of VR to the
phonological component of the grammar.

This paper presents experimental evidence for a new analysis of Russian
VR: what distinguishes the two degrees in this account is not the extent
to which vowels reduce, but rather the level of representation at which
they do so. Assuming a distinction between an abstract, categorical
phonology and a quantitative, gradient phonetics (as per Cohn 1990, Zsiga
1993, Keating 1996, inter alia), this experiment demonstrates that while
neutralization of unstressed /a/ and /o/ is categorical and phonological,
further reduction to schwa turns out to be gradient and phonetic in
nature. Under this analysis, Russian phonology simply banishes /o/ from
unstressed syllables, while the phonetics manipulates the height of
phonologically low unstressed vowels as a function of their duration. This
underappreciated distinction between gradient and categorical systems of
vowel reduction is explored in light of the cross-linguistic typology of
vowel reduction systems, and is argued, together with a theory of
phonologization, to obviate the need for functional grounding or phonetic
motivation for the set of constraints responsible for generating attested
phonological systems.