Paradigmatically Conditioned Phonetic Detail in Hungarian Neutral Vowels

Abstract

In Hungarian palatal vowel harmony in words in which the last vowel is [+back] take suffixes with back vowels and words with final front vowels almost always take suffixes with [-back] vowels. A limited number of monosyllabic words in which the vowel is one of these front vowels [iː], [i], [eː] or [e] are followed by suffixes that take back vowels. Some have argued that neutral vowels are phonetically more retracted in words which take suffixes with back vowels than in in words that take suffixes with front vowels. Others have denied such a difference. We conducted a production experiment in which we investigated the properties of neutral vowels in monosyllabic words in order to shed light on question as to the presence of paradigmatically conditioned phonetic detail in Hungarian. This is important, because the presence of paradigmatically conditioned phonetic detail in Hungarian, shows that such effects go beyond those established as a consequence of incomplete neutralization. On the basis of our findings it is necessary to address the question of the representation of paradigmatically conditioned phonetic detail. We discuss several proposals that have been advanced, but all of them have drawbacks. We propose a usage-based view.