Vowel reduction in Russian: No phonetics in phonology

In this paper I propose a substance-free analysis of vowel reduction in Standard Russian. I argue that the traditional distinction between ‘moderate’ reduction (in pretonic syllables, producing less central vowels) and ‘radical’ reduction (producing central vowels) is not phonologically relevant. The phonological grammar is only responsible for the neutralization patterns and not for the exact phonetic properties of their outcome. In addition, I show that the necessary input-output mappings cannot be effected in a conventional featural system without some weakly supported assumptions: I argue that this demonstrates the viability of a substance-free, emergent-features approach to phonology.