The distribution of the feature [high] in Shona verbs is a prototypical example of positional neutralisation accompanied by vowel harmony."2 In languages which exhibit positional neutralisation of vowel contrasts, one or more vowels (generally, the most marked members of the vowel inventory) may occur distinctively in only a small subset of the structural positions available in the language. Outside of these positions, the marked vowels may surface only if they harmonise with a similar vowel in the privileged position. For example, the mid vowels e and o in Shona verbs are contrastive only in root-initial syllables. These vowels may appear in subsequent syllables only when preceded by a mid vowel in root-initial position. A string of height-harmonic Shona vowels is therefore firmly anchored in the root-initial syllable, as shown in (1): (1) Height-harmonic Shona verbs (Fortune 1955) pera ' end' per-era 'end in' sona 'sew) son-era 'sew for' vererjga 'count' vererjg-eka 'be numerable' tonda 'face' tond-esa 'make to face' oma 'be dry' om-esa 'cause to get dry' seka 'laugh' sek-erera 'laugh on and on' ipa 'be evil' ip-ira 'be evil for' bvisa 'remove' bvis-ika 'be easily removed' bvuma 'agree' bvum-isa 'make agree' pinda 'pass' pind-irira 'to pass right through' Low vowels neither trigger nor propagate height harmony; only [+high] i and u may follow a low vowel, even if the root-initial vowel is mid. This is true of both roots and derived combinations: 1 2 Yill N. Beckman (2) Low vowels block harmony charuk-'jump over/across' ganhur-'limit, demarcate' katuk-'flicker (flame)' tandanis-'chase' kwazis-' greet' pofomadza 'blind' pofomadz-ira 'blind for' tarisa 'look at' taris-ika 'easy to look at' shamba ' wash' shamb-isa 'make wash' pamha 'do again' pamh-isa 'make do again' cheyama 'be twisted' cheyam-isa 'make be twisted' A final restriction on Shona height harmony arises in the interaction of rounding and height harmony. Harmony fails to apply between a rootinitial mid front e and a subsequent round vowel. Thus, rather than a height-harmonic string of e ... o, we find disharmonic e ... u. Harmony applies regularly when the initial vowel is round o: (3) Height and roundness interactions serenuk-'water (gums of *serenokmouth)' svetuk-'jump' svetuk-ira 'jump in' *svetok-era pet-'fold' pet-enura 'unfold' *pet-enora pofomadz-'blind (TRANS)' *pofumadzgobor-' uproot' *goburtonhor-'be cold' *tonhurnonok-'dally, delay' *nonukbover-' collapse inwards' *bovir kobodek-'become empty' *kobudik-In this paper, I present a full analysis of Shona height harmony, encompassing the positional neutralisation of height (1), the inertia of low vowels in the system (2), and the rounding restriction on the spreading of [-high] (3). All of these facts arise from the interaction of markedness and faithfulness constraints in Optimality Theory (OT; Prince & Smolensky 1993). The principle innovation here is a set of ROOT-INITIAL FAITHFULNESS CONSTRAINTS, one instantiation of a family of POSITIONAL FAITHFULNESS CONSTRAINTS. Positional faithfulness co...

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It is well known that German utterance-initial lenis stops are voiceless but that German intervocalic (or intersonorant) lenis stops are sometimes produced with voicing. This variable voicing can be understood as passive voicing, voicing that results because of the voiced context, rather than from active voicing gestures by speakers. Thus, speakers are not actively aiming to voice intervocalic stops, just as they are not actively aiming to voice utterance-initial stops (Jessen & Ringen 2002, Jessen 2004). If this is correct, the variable voicing that occurs in aspirating languages should be different from the voicing that occurs in true voice languages (such as Russian), in which speakers are actively aiming to voice both initial and intervocalic lenis stops. Since there is little data on the relative amount of intervocalic voicing in true voice languages, however, it has been difficult to evaluate this prediction. The purpose of this paper is to compare data on the voicing of intervocalic stops in German and English with data on the voicing of intervocalic stops in true voice languages. We find that the differences are substantial, supporting the claim that aspirating languages are not like true voice languages, in which the feature of contrast is [voice].