Two sources of voicing neutralization in Lithuanian

This study compares two processes that result in voicing neutralization in Lithuanian: regressive voicing assimilation in obstruent clusters and final devoicing of obstruents. Acoustic data is analyzed to assess the behaviour of three acoustic cues to obstruent voicing (i.e. closure and preceding vowel duration and voicing during closure) in both neutralizing environments. The results show that, although both processes result in incomplete voicing neutralization, they use the acoustic cues differently. This suggests that final devoicing and voicing assimilation have different acoustic realizations, supporting their analysis as two different processes.