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The present study poses the question on what phonetic and phonological grounds postalveolar fricatives in Polish can be analyzed as retroflex and whether postalveolar fricatives in other Slavic languages are retroflex as well. Velarization and incompatibility with front vowels are introduced as articulatory criteria for retroflexion, based on crosslinguistic data. According to these criteria, Polish and Russian have retroflex fricatives, whereas Bulgarian and Czech do not. In a phonological representation of these Slavic retroflexes, the necessity of perceptual features is shown. Lastly, it is illustrated that palatalization of retroflex fricatives both in Slavic languages and more generally causes a phonetic and phonological change to a non-retroflex sound.
A common topic in recent literature on phonology is the question of whether phonological processes and segments are licensed by prosodic position or by perceptual cues. The former is the traditional view, as represented by e.g. Lombardi (1995) and Beckman (1998), and holds that segments occur in specific prosodic positions such as the coda. In a licensing by cue approach, as represented by Steriade (1995, 1999), on the other hand, segments are assumed to occur in those positions only where their perceptual cues are prominent, independent of the prosodic position. In positions where the cues are not salient, neutralization occurs.