Final-obstruent devoicing

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Template:Short description Template:More footnotes Template:Sound change Template:IPA notice Final-obstruent devoicing or terminal devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as Catalan, German, Dutch, Quebec French, Breton, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Turkish, and Wolof. In such languages, voiced obstruents in final position (at the end of a word) become voiceless before voiceless consonants and in pausa. The process can be written as *C[+ obstruent, +voice] → C[-voice]/__#.<ref>See Crowley and Bowern (2010), p. 24</ref>

Languages with final-obstruent devoicing

Germanic languages

Most modern continental West Germanic languages developed final devoicing, the earliest evidence appearing in Old Dutch around the 9th or 10th century.

In contrast to other continental West Germanic languages, (Eastern)-Yiddish notably does not alter final voiced sounds; this appears to be a later reversal, most probably under Slavic influence. In its earliest recorded example (Yiddish, written evidence), it has final-obstruent devoicing (טַק "tak" instead of "tag" for day.)

North Germanic languages generally lack devoicing. Norwegian and Swedish do not have final devoicing, and Danish does not even have voiced obstruents that could be devoiced. As in Danish, Icelandic stops are voiceless, but it has voiced fricatives which may also occur word-finally.

Gothic (an East Germanic language) also developed final devoicing independently, but only for fricatives.

Romance languages

Among the Romance languages, word-final devoicing is common in the Gallo-Romance languages, some of which tend to exhibit strong Frankish influence (itself the ancestor of Old Dutch, above).

Notes
  • Romance languages south of the La Spezia-Rimini line as well as standard Italian rarely have words with final voiced consonants for different reasons in their phonological histories, but borrowings from other languages that have a voiced final consonant (like weekend) are not devoiced.
  • Portuguese merges Template:IPA and Template:IPA in word-final position (Template:Lang and Template:Lang are homophones) but has a few words ending with voiced stops like Template:Lang. However, some dialects add an epenthetic vowel after word-final voiced stops.
  • Romanian, which lies geographically between Hungarian and Slavic-speaking areas, does not have it.

Slavic languages

Most Slavic languages exhibit final devoicing, but notably standard (Štokavian) Serbo-Croatian and Ukrainian, Upper Sorbian do not.

Other Indo-European languages

Non-Indo-European languages

Notes
  • Hungarian, a Uralic language which lies geographically between Romanian, Germanic- and Slavic-speaking areas, does not have it.
  • Kalmyk, despite featuring terminal devoicing, has epenthetic vowels at the end of most words which are not indicated in the orthography.

Creole languages

Examples

Dutch and Afrikaans

In Dutch and Afrikaans, terminal devoicing results in homophones such as Template:Lang 'hard' and Template:Lang 'heart' as well as differences in consonant sounds between the singular and plural forms of nouns, for example Template:Lang (Dutch) and Template:Lang (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 from the early fifth century suggests that this terminal devoicing<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> originated in Frankish. Of the old West Germanic languages, Old Dutch, a descendant of Frankish, is the earliest to show any kind of devoicing, and final devoicing also occurred in Frankish-influenced Old French.

Amelands, spoken on the Wadden Sea island of Ameland, is the only Dutch dialect that does not feature final-obstruent devoicing.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>

English

Standard varieties of English do 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 Template:IPA). Additionally, the voiced alveolar stop /d/ is regularly devoiced in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE).<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Old English had final devoicing of Template:IPA, although the spelling did not distinguish Template:IPA and Template:IPA. It can be inferred from the modern pronunciation of half with a voiceless Template:IPA, from an originally voiced fricative Template:IPA in Proto-Germanic Template:Wikt-lang (preserved in German Template:Lang and Gothic Template:Lang). There was also final devoicing of Template:IPA to Template:IPA finally, evidenced by spellings like Template:Lang alongside Template:Lang.

German

Final-obstruents devoicing occurs in the varieties from Northern Germany.Template:Sfn The German contrast between homorganic obstruents is more properly described as a fortis and lenis opposition 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. By contrast, the German term for the phenomenon, Auslautverhärtung ("final-sound hardening"), refers to fortition rather than devoicing. 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, and in fact at the ends of all syllables,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> making homophones of such pairs as Template:Lang ("wheel") and Template:Lang ("council, counsel"), both pronounced Template:IPA. The German varieties of the north, and many pronunciations of Standard German, involve voice in the distinction between fortis and lenis obstruents however. Final devoicing applies to all plosives, affricates and fricatives, and to loan words as well as native words.

Some examples from Northern German include:

Nouns Verbs
Singular Translation Plural Imperative Translation Infinitive
Template:Lang Template:IPA bath Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:Lang Template:IPA talk! Template:Lang Template:IPA
Template:Lang Template:IPA robbery Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:Lang Template:IPA rub! Template:Lang Template:IPA
Template:Lang Template:IPA train Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:Lang Template:IPA say! Template:Lang Template:IPA
Template:Lang Template:IPA archive Template:Lang Template:IPA
Template:Lang Template:IPA mouse Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:Lang Template:IPA read! Template:Lang Template:IPA
Template:Lang Template:IPA orange (colour) Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:Lang Template:IPA manage! Template:Lang Template:IPA

Russian

Final-obstruent devoicing can lead to the neutralization of phonemic contrasts in certain environments. For example, Russian Template:Lang ('demon', phonemically Template:IPA) and Template:Lang ('without', phonemically Template:IPA) are pronounced identically in isolation as Template:IPA.

The presence of this process in Russian is also the source of the seemingly variant transliterations of Russian names into -off (Russian: Template:Lang), especially by the French, as well as older English transcriptions.

Devoicing in compounds

In compounds, the behaviour varies between languages:

  • In some languages, devoicing is lexicalized, which means that words that are devoiced in isolation retain that final devoicing when they are part of a compound. In English, for example, there is an alternation between voiced and voiceless fricatives in pairs such as the following:
    • thief ([f]) – thieve ([v])
    • bath ([θ]) – bathe ([ð])

The process is not productive in English; however, see Consonant voicing and devoicing.

  • In other languages, it is purely phonological, which means that voicing depends solely on position and on assimilation with adjacent consonants; e.g., German.

See also

Notes

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References

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Sources

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