On paradigm uniformity and contrast in Russian vowel reduction

摘要

Reduction of unstressed /o/ and /a/ to [ē] or [(ē)] after non-palatalized con-sonants and to [I] after palatalized ones in Contemporary Standard Russian (CSR) is systematic. But in certain inflectional suffixes [(ē)] occurs instead of the expected [I] after palatalized consonants. In order to explain these apparent exceptions, I argue that vowel reduction after palatalized consonants is constrained by the morphology and that reduction to [I] is blocked in certain cases of the paradigm by the interaction of Relativized Paradigm Uniformity (PU) and Paradigm Contrast (PCON) constraints (Rebrus and Torkenczy 2005; Steriade 2000). The main finding is that there is a crit-ical contrast between the singular and plural within a given case, Number x Case, and [I] is blocked when it would result in homophony with an /i/ [I] suffix in the relevant situation. When the morphological contrast is implemented by some other means, then regular vowel reduction to [I] takes place. The gen sg /-a/ suffix has spe-cial status due to type and token frequency of the [(ē)] variant. An analysis in terms of paradigm uniformity and contrast provides a more coherent account of the direction of language change in CSR vowel reduction than do appeals to stressed vowel faith-fulness, spelling pronunciation, grammatical analogy or paradigm uniformity alone.