final-obstruent devoicing

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

• Afrikaans
• Central Franconian (Luxembourgish and Ripuarian)
• Dutch, also Old and Middle Dutch
• (High) German, also Middle High German{{efn|In normalised Middle High German as opposed to modern New High German, devoicing is represented in writing, thus {{lang|de|Kriemhilt}} is the shortened form of {{lang|de|Kriemhilde}}.}}{{efn|However, final-obstruent devoicing does not occur in Austrian German or Swiss Standard German.Ulrich Ammon, Hans Bickel, Jakob Ebner, Ruth Esterhammer, Markus Gasser, Lorenz Hofer, Birte Kellermeier-Rehbein, Heinrich Löffler, Doris Mangott, Hans Moser, Robert Schläpfer, Michael Schloßmacher, Regula Schmidlin, Günter Vallaster, Variantenwörterbuch des Deutschen. Die Standardsprache in Österreich, der Schweiz und Deutschland sowie in Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Ostbelgien und Südtirol. Walter de Gruyter, 2004, p. LVII.}}
• Gothic (for fricatives)
• Limburgish
• Low German, also Middle Low German
• Old English (for fricatives, inconsistently for {{IPA|/ɣ/}})
• West Frisian.{{cite book |last=van der Veen |first=Klaas F. |chapter=West Frisian Dialectology and Dialects |page=104 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0nx-GUm-0OIC&pg=PA104 |editor1-last=Munske |editor1-first=Horst Haider |editor2-last=Århammar |editor2-first=Nils |editor3-last=Vries |editor3-first=Oebele |editor4-last=Faltings |editor4-first=Volker F. |editor5-last=Hoekstra |editor5-first=Jarich F. |editor6-last=Walker |editor6-first=Alastair G. H. |editor7-last=Wilts |editor7-first=Ommo |title=Handbook of Frisian studies |date=2001 |publisher=Walter de Gruyter |isbn=978-3-484-73048-9 }} In contrast, North Frisian (and some Low German dialects in North Frisia influenced by it) do not have final devoicing.
• East Frisian

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.

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).

• Catalan
• Old French and Middle French. Preserved in certain Modern French inflections such as {{lang|fr|-if}} vs. {{lang|fr|-ive}}, {{lang|fr|grand}} when applying liaison {{IPA|[ɡʁɑ̃t]}} vs. {{lang|fr|grande}} {{IPA|[ɡʁɑ̃d(ə)]}}, but now often regularized. However, dialects maintain word-final devoicing:
• Canadian French
• some Belgian French speakers
• Meridional French, influenced by Catalan and Occitan
• Friulian
• Lombard
• Occitan
• Romansh
• Walloon

;Notes:

• Many Romance languages (such as 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 {{IPA|[s]}} and {{IPA|[z]}} in word-final position ({{lang|pt|nós}} and {{lang|pt|noz}} are homophones) but has a few words ending with voiced stops like {{lang|pt|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.

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

• Belarusian
• Bulgarian
• Czech
• Macedonian
• Polish
• Russian
• Rusyn
• Serbo-Croatian (Kajkavian dialects)
• Slovak
• Slovene
• Lower Sorbian

• Albanian – certain dialects, notably the dialects of certain areas of the Berat and Korçë counties, towards the southeast of Albania
• Arbëresh
• Breton
• Latgalian
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Persian (half-voiced)
• Samogitian
• Yaghnobi

• Azerbaijani (half-voiced in Iranian Azerbaijan){{cite journal |last1=Mokari |first1=Payam Ghaffarvand |last2=Werner |first2=Stefan |title=Azerbaijani |journal=Journal of the International Phonetic Association |date=2017 |volume=47 |issue=2 |page=207 |doi=10.1017/S0025100317000184|s2cid=232347049}}
• Buryat
• Georgian (for stops)
• Indonesian (for stops){{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LuulDwAAQBAJ&q=huruf+b+dilafalkan+p&pg=PA228|title=Panduan Berbahasa Indonesia dengan Baik dan Benar (Guidebook for Speaking Indonesian Well and Correct)|first=Effendi|last=S.|publisher=Dunia Pustaka Jaya|year=2012|isbn=978-6232212350|page=228}}
• Kalmyk Oirat (for stops)
• Kazakh (for stops)
• Khmer
• Kyrgyz (for stops)
• Korean (nuanced; see Korean phonology)
• Livonian (fully devoiced or half-voiced){{cite journal|last=Tuisk|first=Tuuli|date=2016|title=Main features of the Livonian sound system and pronunciation|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308133994|journal=Eesti ja Soome-Ugri Keeleteaduse Ajakiri|volume=7|issue=1|pages=121–143|doi=10.12697/jeful.2016.7.1.06|access-date=March 13, 2022|doi-access=free}}
• Lao
• Malaysian (for stops)
• Maltese
• Modern Javanese (for stops)
• Mongolian{{Citation needed|date=March 2012}}
• Thai
• Tok Pisin
• Turkish (for stops, partially)
• Turkmen (for stops, partially)
• Uzbek (for stops)

;Notes:

• Hungarian, a Uralic language which lies geographically between Romanian, Germanic- and Slavic-speaking areas, does not have it.

In Dutch and Afrikaans, terminal devoicing results in homophones such as {{lang|nl|hard}} 'hard' and {{lang|nl|hart}} 'heart' as well as differences in consonant sounds between the singular and plural forms of nouns, for example {{lang|nl|golf–golven}} (Dutch) and {{lang|af|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 from the early fifth century suggests that this terminal devoicing{{cite book |last1=Langbroek |first1=Erika |last2=Roeleveld |first2=Annelies |last3=Quak |first3=Arend |last4=Vermeyden |first4=Paula |title=Amsterdamer Beiträge Zur Älteren Germanistik |date=2002 |publisher=Rodopi |isbn=978-90-420-1579-1 |page=23 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W91nBn0l96wC&pg=PA23 }} 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.{{citation|last=Van der Veen|first=Klaas F.|editor1-last=Munske|editor1-first=Horst Haider|editor2-last=Århammar|editor2-first=Hans|year=2001|chapter=13. West Frisian Dialectology and Dialects|title=Handbook of Frisian studies|publisher=Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH|place=Tübingen|page=104|isbn=3-484-73048-X|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0nx-GUm-0OIC}}

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 {{IPA|[bæd̥ kʰæt]}}). Additionally, the voiced alveolar stop /d/ is regularly devoiced in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE).{{cite journal |last1=Treiman |first1=Rebecca |title=Spelling and dialect: Comparisons between speakers of African American vernacular English and White speakers |journal=Psychonomic Bulletin & Review |date=April 2004 |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=338–342 |doi=10.3758/bf03196580 |pmid=15260203 |s2cid=7684083 |doi-access=free }}

Old English had final devoicing of {{IPA|/v/}}, although the spelling did not distinguish {{IPA|[f]}} and {{IPA|[v]}}. It can be inferred from the modern pronunciation of half with a voiceless {{IPA|/f/}}, from an originally voiced fricative {{IPA|[β]}} in Proto-Germanic {{wikt-lang|gem-x-proto|*halbaz}} (preserved in German {{lang|de|halb}} and Gothic {{lang|got-Latn|halba}}). There was also final devoicing of {{IPA|[ɣ]}} to {{IPA|[x]}} finally, evidenced by spellings like {{lang|ang|burh}} alongside {{lang|ang|burg}}.

Final-obstruents devoicing occurs in the varieties from Northern Germany.{{sfn|Ammon et al.|2004|p=lvii}} 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,{{Cite book |last=Wiese |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Wiese (linguist) |title=The Phonology of German |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2000 |isbn=0-19-824040-6 |location=Oxford |pages=200–206}} making homophones of such pairs as {{lang|de|Rad}} ("wheel") and {{lang|de|Rat}} ("council, counsel"), both pronounced {{IPA|[ʁaːt]}}. 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:

Final-obstruent devoicing can lead to the neutralization of phonemic contrasts in certain environments. For example, Russian {{lang|ru|бес}} ('demon', phonemically {{IPA|/bʲes/}}) and {{lang|ru|без}} ('without', phonemically {{IPA|/bʲez/}}) are pronounced identically in isolation as {{IPA|[bʲes]}}.

The presence of this process in Russian is also the source of the seemingly variant transliterations of Russian names into -off (Russian: {{lang|ru|-ов}}), especially by the French, as well as older English transcriptions.

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.

• Consonant voicing and devoicing
• Lenition
• Surface filter

{{notelist}}

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book

|editor-last1=Ammon

|editor-first1=Ulrich

|editor-last2=Bickel

|editor-first2=Hans

|editor-last3=Ebner

|editor-first3=Jakob

|display-editors=2

|date=2004

|title=Variantenwörterbuch des Deutschen

|location=Berlin, New York

|publisher=Walter de Gruyter

|isbn=3110165759

| ref = {{harvid|Ammon et al.|2004}}

}}

• Brockhaus, Wiebke. (1995). Final Devoicing in the Phonology of German. Max Niemeyer.
• {{cite journal |last1=Chow |first1=Daryl |last2=Kharlamov |first2=Viktor |title=Final devoicing in Singapore English |journal=The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America |date=September 2018 |volume=144 |issue=3 |pages=1902 |doi=10.1121/1.5068331 |bibcode=2018ASAJ..144Q1902C |s2cid=125369723 }}
• {{cite journal |last1=Dmitrieva |first1=Olga |title=Final voicing and devoicing in American English |journal=The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America |date=October 2014 |volume=136 |issue=4 |pages=2174 |doi=10.1121/1.4899867 |bibcode=2014ASAJ..136.2174D }}
• {{cite CiteSeerX |last1=Grijzenhout |first1=Janet |date=2000 |title=Voicing and devoicing in English, German, and Dutch: Evidence for domain-specific identity constraints |citeseerx=10.1.1.141.5510 }}
• Crowley, Terry & Bowern Claire. (2010). An Introduction to Historical Linguistics (Fourth ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0195365542}}

• [http://www.akerbeltz.org/index.php?title=Final_devoicing_or_Why_does_naoidh_sound_like_N%C9%AFi%C3%A7%3F Final Devoicing or 'Why does sound like ?'] – explanation of devoicing with regard to Scottish Gaelic
• [http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter3/final.htm Final Devoicing] – extract (with illustrative audio clips) from Peter Ladefoged's A Course in Phonetics
• [http://lab.chass.utoronto.ca/rescentre/german/TalkingMap/Devoicing-source.htm Final Devoicing] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050326010845/http://lab.chass.utoronto.ca/rescentre/german/TalkingMap/Devoicing-source.htm |date=2005-03-26 }} – from The Talking Map | Tips for pronunciation

Category:Phonology

Category:Phonetics

Category:Phonotactics