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Abstract Chen (1973) and Neeld (1973) maintain that there is a strict hierarchy of environments for the palatalization of consonants: palatalization occurs preferentially before high vowels (and glides) and if in a given language it occurs before a vowel of a certain height (other things being equal) it will occur before all higher vowels. Although statistically this is quite true, there are some exceptions to this principle. It is instructive to review the nature of these exceptions and to attempt to derive them from “first principles” - in this case, from speech perception. I will then connect these principles to other more general phonological phenomena especially “neutral vowels” in vowel harmony systems.
John J. Ohala (Sat,) studied this question.