Unstressed vowel reduction and contrast neutralisation in western and eastern Bulgarian: A current appraisal

Abstract

Although Bulgarian frequently appears in discussions of vowel reduction, the vowel changes and contrast neutralisation that occur in Bulgarian unstressed syllables are often not well understood and misrepresented in the literature. I report the results of an acoustic study of stressed and unstressed vowels in two present-day varieties of Bulgarian, from the West and the East of Bulgaria. The dialects differ with respect to the magnitude of reduction (how changed unstressed vowels are), its generalisation (which vowels are affected), and the resultant neutralisation patterns; overall, reduction is stronger in the eastern variety. A number of long-standing claims about Bulgarian phonology are disproven, notably that there is less reduction in immediately pretonic than in other unstressed syllables, that high vowels are lowered in unstressed position, and that western Bulgarian reduction is necessarily gradient. I further demonstrate that, although implicationally related, reduction proper (i.e. systematic differences between stressed and unstressed vowels), its potential phonologisation, and contrast neutralisation are distinct aspects of the traditional notion of ‘vowel reduction’, each of which can be fruitfully examined in its own right.