Based on recent experimental studies of word-final devoicing in languages like German and Catalan which show production differences between the neutralized and nonneutralized consonants., i t has been claimed that phonological neutralization is' incomplete'. It seems, however, that this claim is quite premature given that most studies have considered only the neutralizing phenomenon of word-fin...

Post-nasal voicing is a typologically and historically common process. This process, by which voiceless obstruents become voiced after nasals, has a well-known aerodynamic and perceptual basis: (i) prolonged voicing into the stop closure, vis-à-vis postvocalic stops, due to nasal leakage before full velic closure is achieved and oral cavity expansion due to the velum continuing to raise after v...

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...

In Dutch, all morpheme-final obstruents are voiceless in word-final position. As a consequence, the distinction between obstruents that are voiced before vowel-initial suffixes and those that are always voiceless is neutralized. This study adds to the existing evidence that the neutralization is incomplete: neutralized, alternating plosives tend to have shorter bursts than non-alternating plosi...

I take incomplete neutralisation (IN) to be phonological alternations that result in seemingly indistinguishable outputs which nevertheless leave instrumentally detectable differences. German final devoicing is an example. Traditionally, voiced coda obstruents (e.g. in rad) are thought to be devoiced and neutralised with voiceless coda obstruents (e.g. in rat) in a " classic example of a phonol...

In Lezgian, a Nakh-Daghestanian language, final and preconsonantal ejectives and voiceless unaspirated obstruents are voiced in certain monosyllabic nouns. This article offers acoustic evidence confirming that the two coda-voicing series are indeed voiced in final position. Based on comparative evidence, it is demonstrated that this phonetically aberrant neutralization pattern is the result of ...

From a representational viewpoint, the “voiced” series of obstruents in Shanghai dialect can be specified in terms of complementary, contextconditioned tonal and segmental features: either low tone or glottal pulsing. Yet, some studies have proposed that, when the “voiced” obstruents can only be signaled by low tone (stress-initially), they retain something of segmental voicedness. This somewha...

In this study, the compensatory strategies speakers adopt for conveying the voiced-voiceless distinction of consonants in whispered speech were investigated. Of 8 native Dutch speaking subjects each, 26 Dutch minimal word pairs containing voiced and voiceless obstruents, were recorded. Acoustic analysis with the software Praat revealed that both in whisper and in normal speech (1) preceding vow...

This study investigates consonant-related F0 perturbations ("CF0") in French and Italian by comparing the effects of voiced and voiceless obstruents on F0 to those of voiced sonorants. The voiceless obstruents /p f/ in both languages are found to have F0-raising properties similar to American English voiceless obstruents, while F0 following the (pre)voiced obstruents /b v/ in French and Italian...