---
title: "Weak and Semiweak Phonological Positions in English (2011)"
description: "English phonology usually sorts positions into two kinds. 33 references. Strong positions, which are foot-initial, resist weakening."
authors: ["Katalin Balogné Bérces"]
year: 2011
venue: "Journal of English Studies 9"
source: "https://publicaciones.unirioja.es/ojs/index.php/jes/article/view/160"
doi: "10.18172/jes.160"
licence: "CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Journal of English Studies)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/berces-2011-weak-semiweak-phonological-positions-english/"
---
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# Weak and Semiweak Phonological Positions in English

**Authors:** Katalin Balogné Bérces · **Year:** 2011 · **Venue:** [Journal of English Studies 9](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/the-journal-of-english-studies/) ([The Journal of English Studies 2011](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/the-journal-of-english-studies/2011/)) · **Publisher:** [University of La Rioja](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/university-of-la-rioja/) · **Licence:** [CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Journal of English Studies)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.160) · [PDF](https://publicaciones.unirioja.es/ojs/index.php/jes/article/download/160/140) · [DOI 10.18172/jes.160](https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.160) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2124915265)

**Citations:** 4 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
English phonology usually sorts positions into two kinds. Strong positions, which are foot-initial, resist weakening. Weak positions invite lenition and reduction. Balogné Bérces argues that this split is too coarse. Within an unstressed stretch after a stressed syllable, the first position weakens more readily than the second. She calls the first weak and the second semiweak, borrowing a distinction proposed earlier for Dutch.

The evidence comes from three areas:
- the allophones of /t/: aspiration, tapping, glottalling and the Withgott-effect;
- vowel reduction;
- a new investigation of schwa syncope in British English.

The account is formalised in Strict CV (CVCV) phonology, using two lateral forces with opposite effects. Licensing supports a segment, and government spoils it. Different combinations of the two yield strong, weak and semiweak positions.

The author also critiques foot-adjunction analyses (Withgott, Jensen, Davis). These either predict the wrong amount of aspiration or permit reduced vowels where none occur. They also cannot treat final and non-final dactyls alike, although the data show the two behave the same way.

## Key points
- **Three-way classification.** Strong positions are licensed but not governed. Weak positions are governed but not licensed. Semiweak positions are both licensed and governed. A fourth type, neither licensed nor governed, is also weak but lenites differently, for example through glottalisation.
- **Weak vs. semiweak contrast.** Aspiration is more acceptable in *capácity* and *éditor* than in *átom* or *glítter*. In *compétitive*, the second /t/ taps or glottalises less readily than the first.
- **No final/non-final asymmetry.** Against Davis (2003), the same strong–weak–semiweak pattern appears in non-final dactyls (*mìlitarístic*, *Nàvratilóva*) and in final ones (*vánity*). In final semiweak slots, tapping is somewhat more frequent and aspiration VOT is shorter. Even so, outcomes there still vary with word frequency and speech style.
- **Vowels follow the same pattern.** Foot-medial open syllables reduce more than foot-final ones, a point first noted by Burzio (1994). In British English schwa syncope, the first schwa of words like *functionary* drops more easily than the second.
- **Word-initial pretonic syllables are hybrids.** In *potato*, the vowel is reduced but the /p/ stays strong. The model derives this because no stressed vowel to the left diverts the syllable's licensing. Its government, meanwhile, is spent silencing the word-boundary marker.

## Interesting ideas
- Two independent forces with opposite effects, crossed with each other, give a four-cell classification that a single strong/weak scale cannot express; the middle cell naturally predicts variable outcomes.
- Each vowel slot gets only one use of licensing and one of government, so a relation spent on one target is unavailable for another, which explains complementary distributions.
- The word's start is represented as an explicit empty unit (the boundary marker) that actively takes part in relations and explains edge effects.
- The author tests a claimed contextual asymmetry (final vs. non-final dactyls) against the data, finds no real difference, and drops the extra machinery in favour of one uniform account.
- For semiweak positions the model predicts variation among outcomes rather than one categorical output, leaving room for frequency and style effects.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (world): Entity salience or state certainty could be scored on two separate axes, such as support and undermining, so that "both" becomes an explicit, explainable category rather than a muddy midpoint.
- **I2** (frames): Treat semantic-role assignment as a consumable budget per predicate slot, so a role taken by one argument blocks it for others and conflicts are traceable.
- **I3** (tokens): Morphology and tagging rules could reference an explicit boundary pseudo-token, so that edge-specific behaviour is captured by rule rather than special-cased code.
- **I4** (learn): Before adding a context-specific repair rule, check against a control set whether the split actually matters, and keep the simpler rule when it does not.
- **I5** (tree): Mark constructions known to vary across parsers as "expected-variable", so that witness disagreement there is not counted as an error.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

Also on the byline: [Pázmány Péter Catholic University](https://ror.org/05v9kya57).

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## Cite

Cite as: Katalin Balogné Bérces. 2011. Weak and Semiweak Phonological Positions in English. Journal of English Studies 9.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@article{berces2011weak,
  title = {{Weak and Semiweak Phonological Positions in English}},
  author = {Katalin Balogné Bérces},
  journal = {Journal of English Studies 9},
  year = {2011},
  doi = {10.18172/jes.160},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.160}
}
```

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## References

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*Updated 24 October 2026*