Final obstruent devoicing

Sound change and alternation
Metathesis Quantitative metathesis
Lenition Consonant gradation Consonant voicing and devoicing Assibilation L-vocalization Debuccalization
Fortition
Epenthesis Anaptyxis Excrescence Prosthesis Paragoge Unpacking Vowel breaking
Elision Apheresis Syncope Apocope Haplology Fusion Cluster reduction
Cheshirization Compensatory lengthening Nasalization Tonogenesis Floating tone
Assimilation Coalescence Coarticulation Palatalization Velarization Labialization Final devoicing Metaphony (vowel harmony, umlaut) Consonant harmony
Dissimilation
Sandhi Liaison, linking R Consonant mutation Tone sandhi Hiatus Synalepha  Elision Crasis Synaeresis and diaeresis Synizesis
Other types Rhotacism Rhinoglottophilia Sulcalization
view

Final obstruent devoicing or terminal devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as German, Dutch, Polish, and Russian, among others. In these languages, voiced obstruents become voiceless before voiceless consonants and in pausa.

German

In the southern varieties of German, the contrast between homorganic obstruents is rather an opposition of fortis and lenis than an opposition of voiceless and voiced sounds. Therefore, the term devoicing may be misleading, since voice is only an optional feature of German lenis obstruents. Likewise, the German term for the phenomenon, Auslautverhärtung, does not refer to a loss of voice and is better translated as 'final hardening'. However, the German phenomenon is similar to the final devoicing in other languages in that the opposition between two different kinds of obstruents disappears at the ends of words. The German varieties of the north, and many pronunciations of Standard German, do distinguish voiced and voiceless obstruents however. Some examples from German include:

• Laub 'foliage', pronounced [laʊ̯p] in citation
• Rad 'wheel', pronounced [raːt]
• Zug 'train', pronounced [tsuːk]

Dutch

In Dutch and Afrikaans, terminal devoicing results in homophones such as hard 'hard' and hart 'heart' as well as differences in consonant sounds between the singular and plural forms of nouns, for example golf-golven (Dutch) and golf-golwe (Afrikaans) for 'wave-waves'.

The history of the devoicing phenomenon within the West Germanic languages is not entirely clear but the discovery of a runic inscription form the early fifth century that shows devoicing^[1] suggests that its origins are Frankish. Final devoicing had also occurred in Frankish-influenced Old French.

Russian

Final obstruent devoicing can lead to the neutralization of phonemic contrasts in certain environments. For example, Russian бес ('demon', phonemically /bʲes/) and без ('without', phonemically /bʲez/) are pronounced identically in citation as [bʲɛs].

The presence of this process in Russian is also the source of the seemingly variant transliterations of Russian names into "-off" (Russian: -ов), especially by the French.

English

English does not have phonological final obstruent devoicing of the type that neutralizes phonemic contrasts; thus pairs like bad and bat are distinct in all major accents of English. Nevertheless voiced obstruents are devoiced to some extent in final position in English, especially when phrase-final or when followed by a voiceless consonant (for example, bad cat [bæd̥ kʰæt]).

List of languages with final obstruent devoicing

Afrikaans Armenian (for plosives) Azerbaijani Bulgarian Catalan Colognian Czech Dutch Old and Middle English (for fricatives) Faroese Old French (preserved in certain Modern French inflections such as -if vs. -ive) Georgian (for plosives) German Gothic (for fricatives) Modern Greek (pre-Katharevousa; no longer strictly applies) Icelandic Korean (nuanced; see Korean phonology)

Limburgish (for z, g and v) Lombard Luxembourgish Macedonian Maltese Marshallese (in common articulation only; there is no phonemic contrast between voiceless and voiced obstruents) Mongolian Occitan Polish Romansh Russian Slovak Sorbian Tok Pisin Turkish (for plosives) Yaghnobi

See also

• initial consonant voicing
• Surface filter

References

• Brockhaus, Wiebke. (1995) Final Devoicing in the Phonology of German. Max Niemeyer Verlag.
• Crowley, Terry. (1997) An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.

1. ^ B. Mees, The Bergakker inscription and the beginnings of Dutch, in: Amsterdamer beiträge zur älteren Germanistik: Band 56- 2002, edited by Erika Langbroek, Annelies Roeleveld, Paula Vermeyden, Arend Quak, Published by Rodopi, 2002, ISBN 90-420-1579-9, 9789042015791

External links

• Final Devoicing or 'Why does <naoi> sound like <naoich>?' – explanation of devoicing with regard to Scottish Gaelic
• Final Devoicing – extract (with illustrative audio clips) from Peter Ladefoged's A Course in Phonetics
• Final Devoicing – from The Talking Map | Tips for pronunciation