THE ”NEUTRAL” VOWELS OF FINNISH: HOW NEUTRAL ARE THEY?*

Finnish is well known for possessing a front-back vowel harmony system, according to which all vowels in native words agree in terms of frontness/backness. Though there are exceptional forms which do not respect vowel harmony, it is a robust and productive aspect of Finnish phonology and morphophonology. Native stems observe vowel harmony and suffixes have two variants, one with a front vowel and one with a back vowel, where the choice of the ending is a function of the frontness/backness of preceding vowels, e.g. koulu-ssa 'in the school' vs. jälje-ssä 'behind, after'. It is also well known that there are two vowels, both phonetically front in their articulation, which are neutral for purposes of vowel harmony and can occur with either front or back vowels in a word. These vowels, /i/ and /e/, may be preceded and followed by either front or back vowels (e.g. selkä 'back' vs. velka 'debt') and do not participate in morphological alternations with back vowels. 1. This study examines the phonetic realization of the neutral vowels. The specific aspect of the neutral vowels under consideration is the extent to which they are truly articulated with the same degree of backness/frontness regardless of the quality of adjacent vowels. The default hypothesis, following traditional descriptions of * The author wishes to thank Pat Keating for comments on the present study. Also, thanks to the Finnish speakers who kindly served as subjects for the experiment reported in the paper. Any errors and misconceptions are my own responsibility.