Incomplete phonetic neutralization

Arabic has played a central role in the development of phonological theory, with the challenge of describing its complex and interacting alternations spurring theoretical developments from the cycle to variants of Optimality Theory. The phonetic study of these alternations, however, has attracted less attention. This chapter gives an overview of one controversial topic in phonetic research, the incomplete phonetic neutralization of contrasts, in which evidence from Arabic has only recently begun to enter the decades-old debate. Some Arabic phonological alternations, such as Levantine vowel epenthesis, are shown to be incompletely neutralizing, while others, such as Levantine vowel shortening, appear to involve complete neutralization. I propose that patterns of phonetic neutralization are affected by the root-and-pattern morphology of Arabic and may shed light on lexical organization in such systems. Incomplete neutralization results when a form that has undergone a phonological change is still lexically linked to its original timing template. The fossilization of older phonological processes leads to lexical reorganization in the form of loss of such linkages.