On Obstruent Voicing in Breton, German, and Italian

1 Introduction In this paper, I investigate seemingly unrelated occurrences of obstruent voicing in derived environments in three different languages: Breton, German, and Ital-ian. In the Breton dialect spoken on Île de Groix, underlyingly voiceless obstru-ents are realised as voiced when they are followed by a vowel-, or sonorant-initial word (1a). Since they do not surface as voiced when followed by a vowel-initial affix (1b), this instance of voicing cannot be explained as intervocalic or intersonorant voicing. 1 (1) Île de Groix Breton: a. !"ùg #záj]! 'Sit down there!'$ b. !"ùk-ed #záj]! 'Sit down (you.plural) there!' [Ternes 1970:45] In certain varieties of German, where intervocalic voicing is not operative either, root-final underlyingly voiceless obstruents (2a) surface as voiced when followed by a vowel-initial clitic (2b). Voicing does not occur in Standard German pronunciation (2c). (2) German: a. wi[s]en 'to know' b. wei[z]ich 'I know' c. wei[s] ich 'I know' The Italian case is sligthly more complicated. Word-internally, s is either voiced intervocalically or realised as a geminate (3a,b). There are some instances where intervocalic voicing does not apply, as with a vocalic prefix and an s-initial stem (3c). In almost the same environment, the final s of the prefix dis-is subject to intervocalic voicing (3d). In connection with a consonant-initial stem, the same prefix surfaces with the voicing specification of the following obstruent (3e,f). (3) Italian: a. ca[z]a 'house' d. di[z]-onesto 'dishonest' b. ca[s:]a 'cash register' e. di[sp]iacere 'displeasure' c. a-[s]ociale 'asocial' f. di[zg]razia 'misfortune' This paper aims at giving a unified account of the voicing patterns found in the three languages. I will argue in particular that this voicing effect is closely tied to the alignment of morphological and prosodic categories. That is, the left stem