Vowel raising in Polish as contrast preservation

Contrast preservation plays an important role in phonology and morphology (Flemming 1995, 2004; Padgett 1997, 2001). This article illustrates contrast preservation with the example of the opaque interaction of final obstruent devoicing and vowel raising in Polish (Rubach 1984; Gussmann 1980, 2007). The key idea is that vowel raising preserves the underlying contrast in voicing between forms that would be otherwise neutralized on the surface due to final devoicing. If raising failed to apply, forms with original voiced and voiceless obstruents would map onto the same output. The contrast analysis is couched in the framework of PC ‘preserve contrast’ Theory (Łubowicz 2003, 2012) where contrast is formulated as an imperative in the grammar. Cross-linguistic implications of the proposal are examined.