Presentation: Sarah
Summary: Monica
This paper intends to
investigate the final devoicing phenomenon in German. In the literature, it has
been widely reported that voiced obstruents (plosives and fricatives) tend to
be devoiced in syllable-final and word-final conditions. Nonetheless,
researchers disagree with whether this devoicing is complete or not. In view of
certain methodological limitations and problems of the past studies, the
current study aims to look into final devoicing more thoroughly, with a more
rigid design and control. Stimuli were a list of words ended with voiced and
voiceless obstruents. These words occurred in either a neutralizing condition
(syllable-final or word-final) or a non-neutralizing condition
(syllable-initial). All target words were embedded in the same carrier
sentence. Six subjects were recruited. According to their birthplaces, they
could be roughly divided into three dialectal groups. A number of durational
measurements were taken, including burst, vowel, closure, and aspiration. Results
showed that both obstruent type and dialectal region influenced the realization
of final devoicing. It was found that plosives were partially devoiced, while
fricatives were fully devoiced in the neutralizing condition. Moreover, partial
devoicing was only observed in southern speakers, but not in speakers from the
other two dialectal regions. Based on these findings, it is therefore concluded
that in German, syllable-final obstruents may be fully or partially neutralized,
and dialect is one of the determinant factors.
