Final-obstruent devoicing


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 become voiceless before voiceless consonants and in pausa. The process can be written as *C → C/__#.

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, -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, it has final-obstruent devoicing
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 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.
;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 are not devoiced.
  • Portuguese merges and in word-final position but has a few words ending with voiced stops like sob. 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 Serbo-Croatian and Ukrainian, Upper Sorbian do not.
;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

  • Tok Pisin

    Examples

Dutch and Afrikaans

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 and golf–golwe 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 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.

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. Additionally, the voiced alveolar stop /d/ is regularly devoiced in African-American Vernacular English.
Old English had final devoicing of, although the spelling did not distinguish and. It can be inferred from the modern pronunciation of half with a voiceless, from an originally voiced fricative in Proto-Germanic . There was also final devoicing of to finally, evidenced by spellings like burh alongside burg.

German

Final-obstruents devoicing occurs in the varieties from Northern Germany. 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, 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, making homophones of such pairs as Rad and Rat, both pronounced. 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:

Russian

Final-obstruent devoicing can lead to the neutralization of phonemic contrasts in certain environments. For example, Russian бес and без are pronounced identically in isolation as.
The presence of this process in Russian is also the source of the seemingly variant transliterations of Russian names into -off, 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 – thieve
  • * bath – bathe
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.