German non-native realizations of French voiced fricatives in final position of a group of words

We analyzed the realizations of French voiced fricatives /,Ʒ/ by German non-native and French native speakers, in final position of an accentual group, a position where German fricatives are devoiced. Three speaker levels (from beginners to advanced speakers) and different boundary types (depending on whether the fricative is followed by a pause, a schwa, or is directly followed by the first phoneme of the subsequent group), are considered. A set of cues, among which periodicity, fricative duration, and intensity in low frequencies, is used for voicing analysis. Results show that German realizations vary significantly with language, speakers’ level and boundary type, and argue in favor of an influence of L1 (German) final devoicing on non-native realizations. We discuss these effects as well as the influence of orthography (the presence of a schwa at the end of words).