Final devoicing and vowel lengthening in Friulian: A representational approach

This paper proposes an account of final devoicing in Friulian which relies on contrastive feature specification and feature geometry to explicate the connection between final devoicing and vowel lengthening. It is proposed that obstruents which are the outcome of final devoicing are phonologically d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Lingua 2012-06, Vol.122 (8), p.922-951
Main Author: Iosad, Pavel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Allmenn språkvitenskap og fonetikk: 011
Descriptive studies and applied theories
Feature geometry
Final devoicing
Fonologi
General linguistics and phonetics: 011
Humaniora: 000
Humanities: 000
Linguistics
Linguistics: 010
Moraic theory
Phonetics
Romance languages
Sonority hierarchy
Språkvitenskapelige fag: 010
VDP
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Summary:This paper proposes an account of final devoicing in Friulian which relies on contrastive feature specification and feature geometry to explicate the connection between final devoicing and vowel lengthening. It is proposed that obstruents which are the outcome of final devoicing are phonologically distinct from true voiceless obstruents, being completely unspecified for laryngeal features. It is argued that the representational deficiency of such delaryngealized obstruents is directly connected to their inability to license a mora, which opens the way to vowel lengthening. More generally, the paper shows how feature geometry may be adapted to capture the effects of contrastive specification and express markedness relations, and proposes a novel approach to hierarchies involving the sonority of coda segments.
ISSN:0024-3841
1872-6135
DOI:10.1016/j.lingua.2012.03.004