Incomplete neutralization of the voicing contrast in word-final obstruents in Russian: Phonological, lexical, and methodological influences

Journal of Phonetics 43 (2014) 47–56

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Incomplete neutralization of the voicing contrast in word-final obstruents in Russian: Phonological, lexical, and methodological influences Viktor Kharlamov University of Arizona, Department of Linguistics, Douglass Bldg. 200E, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA

A R T I C L E

I N F O

Article history: Received 19 November 2012 Received in revised form 13 January 2014 Accepted 1 February 2014 Available online 28 February 2014 Keywords: Devoicing Incomplete neutralization Obstruents Russian

A B S T R A C T

Acoustic data from languages with word-final devoicing show that words ending in phonologically voiced versus voiceless obstruents (e.g., код /kod/ ‘code’ vs. кот /kot/ ‘cat’ in Russian) are seldom homophonous at the phonetic level. The present study examines how such incomplete neutralization of the underlying contrast varies across (i) different types of obstruents and stimulus words (plosives vs. fricatives; labials/coronals vs. dorsals; monosyllables vs. disyllables; minimal vs. non-minimal pairs) and (ii) different types of experimental tasks and stimulus lists (word-reading vs. picture-naming/word-guessing; presence vs. absence of minimal pairs among the stimuli). Results from Russian show that underlying voicing affects consonantal duration and glottal pulsing but not preceding vowel duration. For consonantal duration, voicing effects are found regardless of speakers' exposure to orthography or minimal pairs and more differences are seen in minimal pairs and monosyllables than non-minimal pairs or disyllables. For glottal pulsing, comparable effects are observed for all types of obstruents and stimulus words but they are significant only during word-reading or when speakers encounter full minimal pairs. This shows that incomplete neutralization has different sources for different acoustic parameters. Some differences are the result of phonological and lexical pressures. Other differences arise due to methodological influences. & 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Languages with final devoicing have long been assumed to completely neutralize the underlying contrast in final obstruents, with minimallycontrasting word pairs being distinct phonologically but not phonetically (e.g., the German word Rad ‘wheel’ being homophonous to Rat ‘advice’, Moulton, 1962; the Russian word код /kod/ ‘code’ being homophonous to кот /kot/ ‘cat’, Wade, 2010). However, experimental research has repeatedly demonstrated that underlyingly voiced stops and fricatives show shorter consonantal durations, more glottal pulsing and longer preceding vowel durations than underlyingly voiceless obstruents (e.g., Dmitrieva, Jongman, & Sereno, 2010; Port & O'Dell, 1985). The present study addresses the question of whether such incomplete neutralization of underlying voicing is the result of the biasing influences of orthography or the presence of minimal pairs among test words (e.g., Fourakis & Iverson, 1984; Iverson & Salmons, 2011; Manaster Ramer, 1996a, 1996b; Mascaró, 1987) or whether it is motivated by phonological and lexical properties of the stimuli and can be attested even when the experimental task does not specifically encourage preservation of the voicing contrast. Traditional phonological accounts assume that final devoicing leads to a complete change in category membership, with underlyingly voiced obstruents becoming identical to their voiceless counterparts (e.g., underlying /d/ pronounced as [t]; among others, Kiparsky, 1976).1 This view has also been supported by the findings of several experimental studies that did not find significant differences between the surface forms of underlyingly voiced versus voiceless stops and fricatives (Barry, 1988; Fourakis & Iverson, 1984; Kopkalli, 1993). Fourakis and Iverson (1984), for example, did not observe any group-level effects of underlying voicing for either consonantal duration or preceding vowel duration in German. At the same time, many other acoustic studies found consistent phonetic differences between phonologically voiced versus voiceless obstruents in word-final positions (Chen, 1970; Charles-Luce, 1993; Dmitrieva et al., 2010; Ernestus & Baayen, 2006; Jassem & Richter, 1989; Kulikov, 2012; Piroth & Janker, 2004; Port & Crawford, 1989; Port & O'Dell, 1985; Pye, 1986; Röttger, Winter, & Grawunder, 2011; Shrager, 2012; Slowiaczek & Dinnsen, 1985; Smith, Hayes-Harb, Bruss, & Harker, 2009; Tieszen, 1997; Warner, Jongman, Sereno, & Kemps, 2004, etc.). Port and O'Dell (1985), for example, reported shorter closures, shorter releases, more glottal pulsing and longer preceding vowels for voiced stops in German. Warner et al.

E-mail address: [email protected] 1 For aspirating languages, such as German, the neutralization process can also be analyzed as ‘final tensing’, i.e. neutralization between tense and lax obstruents in word-final environments (e.g., Jessen, 1998). 0095-4470/$ - see front matter & 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2014.02.002

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(2004) observed shorter releases and longer preceding vowels in voiced coronal plosives in Dutch. Dmitrieva et al. (2010) and Shrager (2012) found shorter consonantal durations in voiced obstruents in Russian. In fact, even the studies that argued for completeness of neutralization, such as Fourakis and Iverson (1984), often observed voicing effects at the level of individual speakers or test items (e.g., Fourakis and Iverson found longer vowels before voiced obstruents in one speaker and one stimulus pair out of four speakers and five item pairs total). In the literature on final devoicing, incomplete neutralization has been attributed to two opposing sources. Some studies argue that it is driven by the phonological and lexical properties of the stimuli (Ernestus & Baayen, 2006, 2007; Port & Crawford, 1989; Port, 1996). According to this approach, speakers produce phonetic differences between underlyingly voiced versus voiceless obstruents in order to preserve the phonological setting of the final consonant. This leads to greater uniformity throughout the different forms of the same lexeme and, in the case of minimally-contrasting items, makes it possible to disambiguate between competing wordforms. Voicing effects also tend to vary depending on the availability of lexical competition, with minimally-contrasting words usually demonstrating robust differences in segmental duration across multiple acoustic parameters (e.g., Port & O'Dell, 1985; Experiment 2 in Kulikov, 2012) but non-minimal pairs showing only limited effects of underlying voicing (e.g., Piroth & Janker, 2004; Experiment 1 in Kulikov, 2012), which further supports the involvement of phonological and lexical factors in incomplete neutralization. However, incomplete neutralization has also been described as an example of hypercorrection that is motivated (at least in part) by the availability of orthographic inputs during word-reading or inclusion of full minimal pairs among the stimuli (Fourakis & Iverson, 1984; Iverson & Salmons, 2011; Jassem & Richter, 1989; Kopkalli, 1993; Manaster Ramer, 1996a, 1996b; Mascaró, 1987; Piroth & Janker, 2004; Warner et al., 2004; Warner, Good, Jongman, & Sereno, 2006). This view is based on the general idea known as the H&H theory (Lindblom, 1990), according to which speakers take into consideration the goals of communication and the situational demands and modify their productions to ensure that phonetic outputs are sufficiently discriminable. In experimental devoicing studies, participants usually perform a reading task and also encounter full minimal pairs during testing (e.g., Chen, 1970; Dmitrieva et al., 2010; Port & O'Dell, 1985; Pye, 1986; van Rooy, Wissing, & Paschall, 2003; Slowiaczek & Dinnsen, 1985; Smith et al., 2009; Warner et al., 2004). Since neutralizing languages tend to use different graphemes for underlyingly voiced versus voiceless obstruents (e.g., ‘п’ (p) versus ‘б’ (b) in Russian), speakers are constantly provided with orthographic cues to voicing. Presence of full minimal pairs among the stimuli accentuates the situational importance of the graphemic contrast and presumably encourages the speakers to give preference to output-oriented constraints and to hyperarticulate the differences that are relevant for consonantal voicing. The biasing role of experimental methodology is especially plausible, given that voicing effects have usually been absent or limited in those investigations that relied on oral procedures or included very few or no minimal pairs among the stimuli (e.g., Fourakis & Iverson, 1984; Jassem & Richter, 1989; Kopkalli, 1993). Incomplete neutralization has also been found during word-reading for non-alternating wordforms that are spelt with a voiced grapheme, even though such items do not provide any paradigmatic support for their [+voiced] specification (e.g., the words und ‘and’ and weg ‘away’ in German; Iverson & Salmons, 2011). Participants of devoicing studies also usually produce multiple repetitions of each words (e.g., 10 repetitions in Smith et al., 2009), which makes it easier for them to notice graphemic contrasts and minimally-contrasting items and to adjust their productions in order to reflect the voicing contrast. At the same time, incomplete neutralization has been attested even in oral tasks (e.g., during oral depluralization, Röttger et al., 2011) or when using non-word items that do not have minimal pair counterparts in the lexicon (e.g., Ernestus & Baayen, 2006; van Rooy et al., 2003). The results for non-words also tend to be very similar to those of existing lexical items (e.g., van Rooy et al., 2003), even though the pronunciation of such items is largely based on their graphemic representations. Thus, incomplete neutralization does not appear to be driven exclusively by the presence of orthographic forms or minimal pairs. However, since previous studies used different experimental methodologies, the exact roles of phonological, lexical and methodological influences are difficult to determine on the basis of existing research. For example, factors such as lexical competition and neighborhood density can explain why incomplete neutralization was more prominent in shorter words or minimal pairs in Port and O'Dell (1985) and Experiment 2 in Kulikov (2012) but less prominent in longer words or non-minimal pairs in Piroth and Janker (2004) and Experiment 1 in Kulikov (2012). At the same time, Port and O'Dell (1985) and Experiment 1 in Kulikov (2012) examined the voicing contrast in single-word utterances, whereas the stimuli in Piroth and Janker (2004) and Experiment 2 in Kulikov (2012) were embedded in carrier phrases. Therefore, the apparent effects of word length and lexical competition may in fact be due to differences in the size of the utterance produced during testing, which is one of the factors known to affect the degree of incomplete neutralization (e.g., presence of more prominent differences during word-reading compared to sentence-reading; Port & Crawford, 1989). Previous studies also have prominent differences in how stimulus lists were compiled. Some investigations were restricted to coronal stops (e.g., Port & Crawford, 1989; van Rooy et al., 2003, Warner et al., 2004). Other researchers examined plosives across different places of articulation (e.g., Charles-Luce, 1993; Chen, 1970; Kulikov, 2012; Röttger et al., 2011) or tested both stops and fricatives (e.g., Dmitrieva et al., 2010; Jassem & Richter, 1989; Piroth & Janker, 2004). Many studies also mixed alternating and non-alternating forms, frequent and infrequent words, and monosyllabic and disyllabic items (e.g., Dmitrieva et al., 2010; Port & O'Dell, 1985). Other investigations did not use any rare or non-alternating words and did not include both monosyllables and disyllables in the same experimental condition (e.g., Kulikov, 2012). Studies also differ in sample sizes (e.g., one Russian speaker and 10 words in Chen, 1970; cf.: 11 Russian speakers and 68 words in Dmitrieva et al., 2010) and speakers' linguistic backgrounds (e.g., testing Russian speakers who reside in the USA, Chen, 1970; Shrager, 2012; cf.: testing Russian speakers who reside in Russia, Kulikov, 2012). These differences in obstruent and word types, lexical frequency, sample size and linguistic background make it difficult to do a direct comparison of findings across studies, as they are all known to have an effect is speech production (Aylett & Turk, 2004; Dmitrieva et al., 2010; Fourakis & Iverson, 1984; Klatt, 1976; Mascaró, 1987; Manaster Ramer, 1996a; Ohala, 1983; Piroth & Janker, 2004; Smith et al., 2009; Winter & Röttger, 2011). For example, phonetic voicing is known to be especially inhibited for fricatives and dorsal plosives (Ohala, 1983; Warner & Tucker, 2011), so incompletely neutralized differences may get masked when stimulus items are not controlled for consonantal place and manner of articulation. Similarly, since shorter segmental durations are usually observed in longer words (Klatt, 1976), partial preservation of voicing is less likely to be found in the final obstruents of disyllables that are likely to be too short for any durational differences to manifest themselves. Low frequency words are thought to favor hyperarticulation and, in the case of word-reading, to encourage greater reliance on orthographic representations (Aylett & Turk, 2004; Piroth & Janker, 2004; Winter & Röttger, 2011). As such, presence of many infrequent items among the stimuli may lead to a significant effect of voicing across the entire dataset. Non-alternating forms are known to be ambiguous with respect to their underlying identity and they may or may not pattern with alternating words (Fourakis & Iverson, 1984; Mascaró, 1987; Manaster Ramer, 1996a), so inclusion of such items among the stimuli may also bias the results. Finally, speaker's fluency in English has been shown to affect the production of voicing in the target language (Dmitrieva et al., 2010), which means that findings from bilingual participants may not be representative of how monolingual populations produce the same contrast. Thus, methodological differences other than orthography or minimal pairs may also explain the presence versus absence of incomplete neutralization in experimental studies both within and across languages.

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The acoustic production study to be presented below aims to specifically investigate phonological, lexical and methodological influences in incomplete neutralization, while keeping samples sizes, stimulus items and participant selection criteria comparable across different experimental conditions. The study examines the effects of underlying voicing for different places of articulation (labial, coronal, dorsal), manners of articulation (plosives, fricatives), word lengths (monosyllables, disyllables), and lexical types (words with potentially homophonous voicing-based counterparts, words without exiting voicing-based counterparts). Methodological influences are evaluated by comparing the results of different experimental tasks (word-reading, picture-naming/word-guessing) and different experimental lists (minimal pairs included, minimal pairs excluded). Voicing effects are examined for four acoustic parameters for plosives (closure duration, release duration, glottal pulsing, preceding vowel duration) and three parameters for fricatives (frication duration, glottal pulsing, preceding vowel duration), which are the parameters that have demonstrated significant effects of underlying voicing in the majority of previous devoicing studies (e.g., Port & O'Dell, 1985; the bilingual Russian data in Dmitrieva et al., 2010). Consonantal duration and glottal pulsing also usually show significant differences in non-neutralizing positions in Russian, with shorter durations and more phonetic voicing produced for underlyingly voiced non-final obstruents (Barry, 1995; Burton & Robblee, 1997; Kulikov, 2012; Ringen & Kulikov, 2012; Samokhina, 2010). Similarly, preceding vowel duration is known to be affected by underlying voicing of non-final obstruents in Russian (e.g., lengthening of vowels before voiced intervocalic obstruents; Barry, 1988), although such findings have not been consistent, with other studies showing that consonantal voicing has no effect on vowel length in non-final syllables in Russian (e.g., Samokhina, 2010). To ensure that the findings are representative of group-level behavior and are not critically affected by speakers' proficiency in a non-neutralizing language, the data come from a large sample of speakers (n¼ 78) who were recruited and tested in Russia and were fluent in the Russian language only. The study also uses a large set of alternating words (n ¼150) that were matched on lexical frequency using a frequency dictionary of Russian (Lyashevskaya & Sharoff, 2009) and were chosen on the basis of a series of pre-tests to ensure that all items were well-known to the population from which speakers were recruited. To minimize the potential effects of various exogenous factors, the stimuli were also matched on their grammatical properties (category, number, case, gender), lexical stress, and orthographic length. Non-repetition procedures are used for oral tasks to ensure that speakers would not inadvertently reproduce the phonetic differences produced by the experimenter. If phonological and lexical properties of stimulus words play a general role in the appearance of incomplete neutralization in the Russian data, results of the study are expected to show effects of underlying voicing across all experimental tasks and regardless of whether or not full minimal pairs are included in the stimulus list. The observed differences are also expected to be more prominent in those words that face greater lexical competition, such as monosyllabic items with existing minimal pair counterparts. If differences are primarily motivated by orthography or the presence of minimally contrasting items, voicing effects are expected to be found only during word-reading or when speakers encounter full minimal pairs during testing. In this case, differences are predicted to be especially robust during word-reading when orthographic cues to the voicing contrast are available at any point during the experiment. Since the study only examines tokens produced as single-word utterances and all recordings were done in a laboratory environment, the results are not expected to be necessarily representative of voicing neutralization in connected speech, when semantic and pragmatic factors greatly limit the functional load of word-final obstruents (among others, Iverson & Salmons, 2011).

2. Method 2.1. Subjects Participants of the study (n ¼78; 23 males, 55 females; 18–28 years old; mean age of 20.1) were Russian-speaking undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who were recruited and tested at a university campus in Perm, Russia. They spoke the same variety of standard (Northern) Russian, with the majority of participants (n ¼67) self-identifying as monolingual. The remainder (n¼ 11) grew up in bilingual households (Russian and Komi, Tatar or Udmurt); however, they received all their schooling in Russian, only used Russian in their daily lives and did not consider themselves to be fluent in any other language. All participants indicated having low to average proficiency in at least one foreign language (English, French, German, Spanish). None majored in linguistics or related fields. None self-reported any language-related physiological disorders. 2.2. Procedures 2.2.1. Experimental groups Speakers were assigned at random to one of four experimental groups (Orth‐MP‐, Orth-MP+, Orth+MP‐, Orth+MP+). The groups differed with respect to (i) availability of orthographic representations of test items and (ii) presence of voicing-based minimal pairs among the stimuli. Speakers in the Orth‐MP‐ group performed an oral task (picture-naming for easy-to-image objects, word-guessing for hard-to-image items) and did not encounter any full minimal pairs during the experiment (e.g., for the /kot/~/kod/ pair, half of the speakers encountered /kot/ and the other half encountered /kod/ but none of the individual participants were exposed to both items). Speakers in the Orth-MP+ group also took part in an oral task but they encountered both members of all minimally contrasting item pairs (e.g., each participant encountered both /kod/ and /kot/). Speakers in the Orth+MPgroup performed a word-reading task and saw only one member of each minimal pair. Speakers in the Orth+MP+ group also took part in a wordreading task but they saw both members of all minimal pairs. 2.2.2. Stimuli Stimulus items (n¼ 150) were existing monosyllabic and disyllabic words of Russian that ended in plosives (n¼ 90; 45 voiced, 45 voiceless; e.g., /kot/ ‘cat’, /parad/ ‘parade’) and fricatives (n¼ 60; 30 voiced, 30 voiceless; e.g., /ɡruz/ ‘load’, /tarif/ ‘tariff’). Final consonants were distributed evenly across labial, coronal and dorsal places of articulation. All items were singular masculine nouns in the Nominative case and with ultimate stress. Each word could be inflected by adding a vowel-initial suffix. Five different types of stimulus items were included in the study: (i) plosive-final minimally-contrasting monosyllables (n¼ 30; e.g., /kot/ ‘cat’, /kod/ ⁎ ⁎ ‘code’), (ii) plosive-final non-minimal pair monosyllables (n ¼30; e.g., /zlak/ ‘grass’, /flaɡ/ ‘flag’; /zlaɡ/ and /flak/ are not existing words of Russian), ⁎ ⁎ (iii) plosive-final non-minimal pair disyllables (n ¼30; e.g., /pirat/ ‘pirate’, /parad/ ‘parade’; cf. /pirad/, /parat/), (iv) fricative-final non-minimal pair ⁎ ⁎ monosyllables (n¼ 30; e.g., /trus/ ‘coward’, /ɡruz/ ‘load’; cf. /truz/, /ɡrus/), and (v) fricative-final non-minimal pair disyllables (n ¼30; e.g., /tarif/ ‘tariff’,

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⁎ ⁎ /zaliv/ ‘gulf’; cf. /tariv/, /zalif/). (Disyllabic plosive-final or monosyllabic and disyllabic fricative-final minimal pairs were not included due to the low number of relevant lexical items in Russian.) Test words were controlled for length in graphemes (Mvoiced ¼4.4, SD¼1.1; Mvoiceless ¼ 4.3, SD¼1.0; │t│(74)<1; p>.1) and lexical frequency (Mvoiced ¼27.4 ipm, SD¼ 90.6; Mvoiceless ¼ 9.95 ipm, SD¼18.3; │t│(74)<2; p>.1). Non-contrasting items had matching final onsets and/or nuclei. Each stimulus list also contained filler items (n¼ 150). Fillers were Nominative singular masculine and feminine nouns ending in vowels and sonorant consonants (e.g., /zal/ ‘hall’, /stakan/ ‘(drinking) glass’). For those participants who were exposed to only one member of each minimal pair, a supplementary set of monosyllabic words (n¼ 15; no minimal pairs) was added to the stimulus list to ensure that all speakers were asked to produce a total of 300 tokens. Considering the nature of the production study, stimulus words (and fillers) were chosen such that each item could be represented as a vector image for easy-to-image objects (n ¼50; e.g., /flaɡ/ ‘flag’) or a short fill-in-the-blank description for hard-to-image objects and concepts (n¼ 100; e.g., Мексиканский, Финский, Персидский…….. ‘of Mexico, of Finland, Persian……..’, /zaliv/ ‘gulf’ is the expected answer). Vector images came from standardized sets (Cycowicz, Friedman, Rothstein, & Snodgrass, 1997; Rossion & Pourtois, 2004; Severens, van Lommel, Ratinckx, & Hartsuiker, 2005). Fill-in-the-blank descriptions were created on the basis of dictionary definitions in Ozhegov and Shwedova (2000). To ensure that vector images and fill-in-the-blank descriptions would result in a high rate of expected responses, 168 undergraduate and graduate students from the same university (none participated in the production study) filled out anonymous written questionnaires that asked respondents to evaluate potential stimuli (e.g., providing semantic associations, naming objects appearing in vector images, completing fill-in-the-blank descriptions). The selection of vector images and descriptions were repeatedly modified on the basis of the answers provided in the questionnaires until at least 90% of the respondents produced the expected wordform for each non-orthographic representation. 2.2.3. Experimental sessions and instruments Participation in the study involved attending a single experimental session that lasted up to 1 h and took place in a sound-treated room. During the experiment, speakers were instructed to name the items that were shown in the center of a computer screen in front of them. For the word-reading task, orthographically-represented stimuli were displayed for 1 s and participants were asked to pronounce each word as soon as it appeared. For the picture-naming/fill-in-the-blank task, speakers were shown vector images or short semantically-based descriptions and were instructed to name the objects or the missing words in a single-word response. Vector images were shown for 1 s. Fill-in-the-blank descriptions were displayed until a computer key was pressed (with a 4 s time-out). Experimental sessions started with practice items (n ¼10), followed by six experimental blocks with 50 stimulus items per block. The first five items in each block were fillers. The rest of the items were presented in a pseudo-random order, with members of the same minimal pair never adjacent to each other. A given stimulus item occurred once during the recording session, so that participants produced only one repetition of each word. Randomization and stimulus delivery were done with the Presentations software (Version 14; Neurobehavioral Systems, Inc.). A unidirectional Shure microphone and a portable Marantz recorder were used to capture speakers' responses. Recording (mono) was done continuously with a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz and a depth of 16 bits. 2.2.4. Analyses Acoustic measurements were performed using the PRAAT software (Boersma & Weenink, 2009). Four parameters were measured for plosives: (i) closure duration, (ii) release duration, (iii) glottal pulsing, and (iv) preceding vowel duration. Three parameters were measured for fricatives: (i) frication duration, (ii) glottal pulsing, and (iii) preceding vowel duration. Consonantal duration and preceding vowel duration were measured in milliseconds. Glottal pulsing was measured in cycles, which is a conservative measurement of vocal fold vibration that has been argued to be more appropriate for partially devoiced obstruents than measurements in milliseconds or ratios (Fourakis & Iverson, 1984). Segmental boundaries were determined on the basis of spectrograms and corresponding oscillograms. For vowels preceded by obstruents, the measurement started at the end of the release or frication noise of the consonant and the beginning of F2 and F3 associated with the vowel. For vowels preceded by sonorants, duration was measured from the point of abrupt changes in the waveform and the spectral pattern. The end of the vowel was marked at the point of interruption in F2 and F3. Closures of stops were measured from the end of the preceding vowel to the beginning of the release burst, which was defined as the point of significant increase in waveform amplitude and concurrent appearance of a noise pattern in the spectrogram. Releases were measured from the end of closure to the end of burst or, if a segment was aspirated, the end of aspiration. Bursts and releases were measured together because previous research has demonstrated that effects of underlying voicing are not usually significant when examining such short periods as burst-only duration (e.g., Fourakis & Iverson, 1984). Frication duration was marked from the end of the preceding vowel to the end of high-frequency noise. Glottal pulsing was measured by counting the number of cycles of vocal fold vibration during consonantal closure for stops or the period of frication noise for fricatives. Measurement examples are provided in Fig. 1, which shows the placement of boundaries in the plosive-final word /kot/ ‘cat’ (Fig. 1A) and the fricative-final word /muʒ/ husband (Fig. 1B).

Fig. 1. Placement of segmental boundaries in the plosive-final word /kot/ ‘cat’ (A) and the fricative-final word /muʒ/ ‘husband’ (B).

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A total of 10,810 acoustic tokens were retained for analyses, which represents 92.4% of the maximum possible number of tokens (n¼ 11,700; 150 words×78 speakers). The missing data were due to speakers not producing the expected wordform in non-reading tasks (n ¼805) or the reading task (n ¼12), background noise (n ¼15), token-internal pausing (n ¼24), absence of release (n¼ 10), and miscellaneous technical issues (n¼ 24). The data were subjected to a series of analyses of variance with repeated measures (RM ANOVAs). Predictor variables included (i) underlying voicing (voiced, voiceless), (ii) consonantal place of articulation (labial, coronal, dorsal), and (iii) experimental group (Orth-MP-, Orth-MP+ , Orth+MP-, Orth+MP+). Separate by-subject (F1) and by-item (F2) analyses were performed for each acoustic measurement and each of the five stimulus types. Only those effects that were found in both F1 and F2 analyses were judged to be statistically significant. Section 3 focuses exclusively on group-level findings and significant main effects and interactions involving the predictor variable of underlying voicing. (Full results are available in the doctoral dissertation in Kharlamov, 2012.)

3. Results 3.1. Consonantal duration 3.1.1. Closure/frication duration Results for closure/frication duration are provided in Table 1. For plosives, minimal pair monosyllables showed shorter closures for voiced stops (difference of 7 ms; F1(1,74)¼40.07, p <.001; F2(1,24)¼ 11.59, p¼ .002). Non-minimal pair monosyllables or disyllables did not show any significant differences (Fs<1, ps >.05). For items ending in voiced fricatives, the period of frication noise was shorter in monosyllables (13 ms difference; F1(1,74)¼79.32, p<.001; F2(1,24)¼17.82, p<.001) as well as disyllables (8 ms difference; F1(1,74)¼ 23.78, p <.001; F2(1,24)¼ 14.94, p<.001). None of the five stimulus types showed an interaction between underlying voicing and experimental group (Fs<1, ps>.05) or underlying voicing and consonantal place of articulation (Fs<1, ps>.05). 3.1.2. Release duration Results for release duration are shown in Table 2. Shorter release durations were observed in voiced stops in monosyllabic minimal pairs (difference of 6 ms; F1(1,74)¼ 33.21, p <.001; F2(1,24)¼ 9.75, p ¼.005) and monosyllabic non-minimal pairs (difference of 5 ms; F1(1,74)¼ 13.26, p<.001; F2(1,24)¼ 16.48, p<.001). Plosive-final disyllables showed only a non-significant difference (Fs <1, ps >.05). Underlying voicing did not interact with any other predictor variable for any of the stimulus types (Fs<1, ps>.05). 3.2. Glottal pulsing Results for glottal pulsing are given in Table 3 and Fig. 2. As shown in Table 3, significantly more cycles of vocal fold vibration were produced for underlyingly voiced plosives and fricatives across all stimulus types (plosive-final monosyllabic minimal pairs: F1(1,74)¼ 73.94, p<.001; F2(1,24)¼ 207.03, p<.001; plosive-final monosyllabic non-minimal pairs: F1(1,74)¼ 50.22, p <.001; F2(1,24)¼ 327.87, p<.001; plosive-final disyllables: F1(1,74)¼72.54, p<.001; F2(1,24)¼124.10, p <.001; fricative-final monosyllables: F1(1,74)¼31.32, p <.001; F2(1,24)¼ 75.52, p <.001; fricative-final disyllables: F1(1,74)¼ 34.14, p <.001; F2(1,24)¼345.98, p <.001). Differences in glottal pulsing were not affected by consonantal place of articulation (Fs<1, ps>.05). However, for all five stimulus types, glottal pulsing showed a significant interaction between underlying voicing and experimental group (plosive-final monosyllabic minimal pairs: F1(1,74)¼ 9.43, p<.001; F2(1,24)¼44.13, p <.001; plosive-final monosyllabic non-minimal pairs: F1(1,74)¼9.54, p <.001; F2(1,24)¼56.67, p<.001; plosive-final disyllables: F1(1,74)¼ 14.60.54, p <.001; F2(1,24)¼55.30, p <.001; fricative-final monosyllables: F1(1,74)¼ 5.68, p ¼.001; F2(1,24)¼ 47.02, p<.001; fricative-final disyllables: F1(1,74)¼5.62, p¼ .002; F2(1,24)¼ 130.63, p<.001).

Table 1 Consonantal closure/frication durations in milliseconds (ms) in underlyingly voiced vs. voiceless obstruents. Final C

Stimulus type

Examples

Voiced

Voiceless

Difference

Plosives

Monosyllables (minimal pairs) Monosyllables (non-minimal pairs) Disyllables Monosyllables Disyllables

/kot/, /kod/ /zlak/, /flaɡ/ /pirat/, /parad/ /trus/, /ɡruz/ /tarif/, /zaliv/

99 101 93 162 155

106 103 94 175 163

⁎⁎ −7 −2 −1 ⁎⁎⁎ −13 ⁎⁎⁎ −8

Fricatives

Significance codes:

⁎⁎⁎

.001,

⁎⁎

⁎ .01, .05.

Table 2 Consonantal release durations in milliseconds (ms) in underlyingly voiced vs. voiceless plosives. Final C

Stimulus type

Examples

Voiced

Voiceless

Difference

Plosives

Monosyllables (minimal pairs) Monosyllables (non-minimal pairs) Disyllables

/kot/, /kod/ /zlak/, /flaɡ/ /pirat/, /parad/

65 67 47

71 72 48

⁎⁎ −6⁎⁎ −5 −1

Significance codes:

⁎⁎⁎

.001,

⁎⁎

⁎ .01, .05.

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V. Kharlamov / Journal of Phonetics 43 (2014) 47–56

Table 3 Mean cycles of glottal pulsing in underlyingly voiced vs. voiceless obstruents. Final C

Stimulus type

Examples

Voiced

Voiceless

Difference

Plosives

Monosyllables (minimal pairs) Monosyllables (non-minimal pairs) Disyllables Monosyllables Disyllables

/kot/, /kod/ /zlak/, /flaɡ/ /pirat/, /parad/ /trus/, /ɡruz/ /tarif/, /zaliv/

4.2 3.2 2.9 2.4 2.1

2.1 2.2 2.0 .9 .8

⁎⁎⁎ 2.1⁎⁎⁎ 1.0⁎⁎⁎ .9⁎⁎⁎ 1.5⁎⁎⁎ 1.3

Fricatives

Significance codes:

⁎⁎⁎ ⁎⁎ ⁎ .001, .01, .05.

Fig. 2. By-group means of glottal pulsing in underlyingly voiceless (light gray) versus voiced (dark gray) obstruents in plosive-final monosyllabic minimal pairs (A), plosive-final monosyllabic non-minimal pairs (B), plosive-final disyllables (C), fricative-final monosyllables (D), and fricative-final disyllables (E). A value of 1.0 on the y-axis corresponds to 1 glottal cycle. Significance of pairwise comparisons is marked as ‘*’ (p < .05), ‘**’ (p <.01), ‘***’ (p < .001), and ‘n.s.’ (p> .1).

As demonstrated in Fig. 2, pairwise comparisons revealed that differences in glottal pulsing were never significant in the Orth-MP- group (all ps>.1). The same differences were always significant in the Orth+MP- group (differences of 1.0 to 3.0 cycles; all ps<.01) and the Orth+MP+ group (differences of 1.1 to 3.8 cycles; all ps <.01). For the Orth-MP+ group, differences were marginal for plosive-final monosyllabic non-minimal pairs (difference of .3 cycles; p<.1) but significant for all other stimulus types (differences of .6 to 1.3 cycles; all ps<.01). Furthermore, for phonologically voiced obstruents, both plosive-final and fricative-final disyllables showed significantly more voicing in the two Orth+ groups compared to the two Orth- groups (all ps<.01). For fricative-final monosyllables, differences in the amount of voicing produced in underlyingly voiced consonants were significant across all groups (all ps <.05).

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3.3. Preceding vowel duration Results for preceding vowel duration are provided in Table 4. Vowel duration did not show any statistically significant differences between the vowels preceded by voiced versus voiceless obstruents (Fs<1, ps>.05). Vowel length also did not show any significant interactions between underlying voicing and experimental group (Fs<1, ps>.05) or underlying voicing and consonantal place of articulation (Fs<1, ps>.05).

4. Discussion The present investigation examined incomplete neutralization of the voicing contrast in word-final stops and fricatives in Russian. The main goal of the research was to determine how partial preservation of voicing varied across different types of obstruents and stimulus words, experimental tasks (word-reading vs. picture-naming/word-guessing), and stimulus lists (minimal pairs included vs. excluded). 4.1. Summary of the results Significant differences between underlyingly voiced and voiceless obstruents were found for consonantal duration (closure/frication duration, release duration) and glottal pulsing but not preceding vowel duration. For consonantal duration, all items other than plosive-final disyllables (i.e., four out of five stimulus types) showed shorter closure/frication durations or release durations for voiced obstruents. These differences were observed independently of consonantal place of articulation and were significant not only during word-reading or when speakers encountered full minimal pairs but also in non-reading tasks and in the absence of minimally-contrasting items. Preservation of differences was also not uniform across different types of stimulus words. For plosives, minimal pairs showed voicing effects for both closure duration and release duration. Non-minimal pair monosyllables demonstrated differences in release duration only. Disyllables did not show any differences in consonantal duration. For fricatives, both monosyllabic and disyllabic stimuli demonstrated differences in frication duration. For glottal pulsing, more cycles of vocal fold vibration were seen in underlyingly voiced obstruents for all five stimulus types. These differences were independent of consonantal place of articulation. However, unlike consonantal duration, voicing effects were significant (or marginally significant) only during word-reading or when full minimal pairs were included among the stimuli. Preceding vowel duration did not show any effects of underlying voicing for any of the five stimulus types even when speakers were presented with orthographic inputs or encountered full minimal pairs during testing. As in the case of consonantal duration and glottal pulsing, vowel length was also not affected by consonantal place of articulation. 4.2. Consonantal duration Results for consonantal duration show that Russian speakers produced shorter closures and releases in underlyingly voiced consonants. This parallels the findings of Pye (1986), Dmitrieva et al. (2010), Kulikov (2012) and Shrager (2012) who also reported preservation of differences in the duration of word-final stops and fricatives in Russian. The results are also in line with the shorter durations that are seen in non-final voiced obstruents in Russian (Barry, 1995; Burton & Robblee, 1997; Kulikov, 2012; Ringen & Kulikov, 2012; Samokhina, 2010). The observed differences were also not limited to a specific experimental task or a particular stimulus list but were found both in the presence and absence of orthographic representations and regardless of whether or not full minimal pairs were included among the stimuli. This shows that, as far as the consonantal duration is concerned, incomplete neutralization can take place even without speakers' exposure to written forms or minimal pairs. For plosives, consonantal duration also showed sensitivity to word length and lexical competition. More durational parameters were affected by underlying voicing in minimal pairs than non-minimal pairs and in monosyllables than disyllables. This result is consistent with the Russian data in Kulikov (2012) who reported that consonantal closures were affected by voicing in monosyllabic minimal pairs but not disyllabic non-minimal pairs. It is also in line with the view that phonetic differences are enhanced in items with many phonological competitors (Crosswhite, 1999; Hockett, 1967; Munson, 2007). However, differences in closure/frication duration and release duration were as low as 5 ms and never exceeded 13 ms, which is typical of incompletely neutralized contrasts not only for consonantal duration but also glottal pulsing and preceding vowel duration (e.g., closure voicing differences of 1 ms in Charles-Luce & Dinnsen, 1987; vowel duration differences of 3.5 ms in Warner et al., 2004). Due to such small magnitude, this type of incomplete neutralization is unlikely to play any major role in everyday communication. Preservation of differences in consonantal duration is also not likely to be something that speakers control actively in order to maintain a phonological contrast in surface outputs, especially since the amount of lexical competition is usually limited in non-laboratory speech because of the availability of morphological, syntactic and semantic cues to consonantal voicing (Iverson & Salmons, 2011; Winter & Röttger, 2011). Instead, these differences are likely to be the result of highly automated processes that take place during lexical access and the planning stages of speech production, such as the automatic co-activation of morphologically related forms in which the critical consonant is not subject to neutralization (Winter & Röttger, 2011). For example, production of the plosive-final word /luɡ/ ‘meadow’ can be expected to involve co-activation of the morphologically related forms, including the plural form /luɡa/ in which the critical consonant is intervocalic and is shorter than its voiceless counterpart (e.g., Ringen & Kulikov, 2012), which then motivates the production of a shorter release in /luɡ/. Similarly, the presence of enhanced phonetic differences in minimal pair items may be attributed to the activation of potentially homophonous lexical competitors. For example, production of /kot/ ‘cat’ likely involves the Table 4 Preceding vowel duration in milliseconds (ms) in words ending in underlyingly voiced vs. voiceless obstruents. Final C

Stimulus type

Examples

Voiced

Voiceless

Difference

Plosives

Monosyllables (minimal pairs) Monosyllables (non-minimal pairs) Disyllables Monosyllables Disyllables

/kot/, /kod/ /zlak/, /flaɡ/ /pirat/, /parad/ /trus/, /ɡruz/ /tarif/, /zaliv/

130 129 118 126 120

126 127 115 123 117

4 2 3 3 3

Fricatives

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activation of /kod/ ‘code’, which may encourage the presence of additional phonetic differences that disambiguate the two items, such as the lengthening of the voiceless closure or an overall lengthening of the voiceless plosive (that may end up affecting only the closure if release duration is already at ceiling). Finally, the influences of word length and consonantal manner of articulation that are seen in the Russian data are likely the result of overall differences in consonantal duration. For example, the plosive-final disyllabic word /parad/ ‘parade’ did not show any differences in either closure or release duration even though it has morphologically related forms in which the same obstruent is prevocalic, such as the plural form /parada/. However, since final plosives of monosyllables were at least 24 ms longer than those of disyllables, closures and releases of disyllables were likely not long enough for incomplete neutralization to manifest itself. Similarly, the fact that the voicing contrast was not preserved in plosive-final disyllables but was significant in fricative-final disyllabic items is likely due to frication duration being at least 49 ms longer than closure duration and at least 83 ms longer than release duration, which makes it easier for fricatives to show incomplete neutralization. 4.3. Glottal pulsing For glottal pulsing, speakers produced more cycles of vocal fold vibration for underlyingly voiced obstruents. This is in line with other previous experimental findings for Russian (e.g., Kulikov, 2012; Pye, 1986) and is also consistent with how voiced obstruents are realized in non-final environments in the Russian language (Barry, 1995; Bondarko, 1977; Burton & Robblee, 1997; Kulikov, 2012; Ringen & Kulikov, 2012; Samokhina, 2010). However, unlike consonantal duration, phonetic voicing showed incomplete neutralization only when speakers were exposed to orthographic cues to the underlying contrast or when minimal pairs were included among the stimuli. This confirms that partial preservation of voicing can be motivated by the availability of written forms during word-reading or inclusion of full minimal pairs among the stimuli. Sensitivity to graphemic cues to voicing is not unexpected for Russian, which is a language with ‘shallow orthography’ (Liberman, Liberman, Mattingly, & Shankweiler, 1980). Speakers of such languages are thought to perform word-reading by means of direct conversion of written symbols into phonological units (Frost, 1994; Levelt, 2001; Katz & Frost, 1992). This can occasionally lead to a mismatch between phonological structures and phonetic forms, such as the commonly attested lengthening of singleton phonemes that are spelled with two identical letters (e.g., the lengthening of /t/ in the Dutch word baatten ‘availed’; Warner et al., 2004). In the present study, orthographic voicing resulted in a significant increase in the number of glottal cycles for graphemically voiced obstruents. Presence of minimal pairs among the stimuli also led to the production of differences in glottal pulsing. In this case, inclusion of potentially homophonous items in the experimental list likely emphasized the situational importance of the voicing contrast and encouraged the use of phonetic voicing to disambiguate competing wordforms. However, whereas graphemic differences were available for all test items and throughout the entire reading task, potential homophony affected only a subset of stimulus items and it took time to encounter both members of a given minimal pair. As a result, the effect of direct exposure to lexical competition was not as prominent as the effect of orthography, which explains why the speakers who performed a reading task but did not see full minimal pairs showed more robust differences in glottal pulsing than the group for which the two parameters were reversed. When speakers did not see graphemic cues to voicing and did not need to disambiguate between potentially homophonous words, they produced the same amount of glottal pulsing in both underlyingly voiced and voiceless obstruents. This finding can be attributed to the low situational relevance of the voicing contrast in the absence of minimally-contrasting items among the stimuli and the nature of the speech planning process in non-reading tasks, which is known to involve the retrieval of phonological codes on the basis of lemmas and not by establishing correspondences between graphemes and phonemes (Levelt, 2002). However, even though indirect orthographic influences and speaker's knowledge of the lexicon did not affect glottal pulsing, they may have still played a role in the Russian data by affecting parameters other than phonetic voicing (or segmental duration). This seems especially likely, considering that graphemic influences are well known to exist in literate populations outside of word-reading (e.g., Bentin, Hammer, & Cahan, 1991; Lupker, 1982; Tanenhaus, Flanigan, & Seidenberg, 1980; Treiman & Danis, 1988; Ziegler & Ferrand, 1998). Results for glottal pulsing also show that Russian speakers are aware of the relationship between underlying and phonetic voicing in non-final obstruents and are willing to extend it to word-final environments whenever experimental methodology encourages them to do so. Reliance on glottal pulsing specifically suggests that, in the Russian speakers' grammars, the voicing contrast is associated primarily with vocal fold vibration. This is as expected, given that glottal pulsing is thought to be the most reliable cue to underlying voicing in non-final environments in Russian (Barry, 1995; Bondarko, 1977; Kulikov, 2012; Ringen & Kulikov, 2012; Samokhina, 2010). The active control over the use of glottal pulsing also means that speakers may choose not to produce vocal fold vibration even during word-reading if the contrast is not situationally relevant. This likely explains why glottal pulsing did not show significant differences during the reading task in the monolingual data in Dmitrieva et al. (2010) who arranged their stimuli in a pseudo-random order which created an impression that final devoicing was not the topic of investigation. Finally, the present study demonstrated that phonetic devoicing was not affected by consonantal place of articulation, even though glottal pulsing is known to be less prominent in posterior plosives (Ohala, 1983; Warner & Tucker, 2011). This indicates that neutralization was consistent across labial, coronal and dorsal consonants, possibly because the duration of glottal pulsing was not long enough to pose an aerodynamic problem even for dorsals. 4.4. Preceding vowel duration Unlike consonantal duration or glottal pulsing, preceding vowel duration did not show any significant effects of underlying voicing. This is in line with the results in Shrager (2012) and the monolingual Russian data in Dmitrieva et al. (2010) but not with the claims made in Chen (1970), Pye (1986), and Kulikov (2012). Such discrepancy in experimental results can be attributed to several factors. First, as noted in Section 1, consonantal voicing does not have a consistent effect on preceding vowel duration in non-final syllables in Russian. Barry (1988), for example, reported that Russian vowels were up to 21% longer when they were followed by word-medial voiced consonants, whereas the recent investigation in Samokhina (2010) found no reliable effects of consonantal voicing on the durations of non-final nuclei. Vowel length is also known to be irrelevant for the segmental phonology of Russian (Cubberley, 2002). Speakers of German, for example, can infer the underlying voicing of obstruents by observing the relationship between vowel length and consonantal voicing, with short (lax) vowels usually found before voiced coda obstruents (Kleber, John, & Harrington, 2010). Such phonotactic restrictions do not exist in Russian, so there is no phonological evidence for vowel durations being sensitive to consonantal voicing. Russian also has highly variable stress placement, which makes it possible for

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either stressed (longer) or unstressed (shorter) vowels to precede both voiced and voiceless consonants (e.g., stress falling on the first vowel /o/ in /bloka/ but the second vowel /a/ in /kota/, which are the plural forms of /blok/ ‘block’ and /kot/ ‘cat’). Dialectal variation, language contact and speaker's proficiency in a non-neutralizing language may also explain the differences in vowel duration findings. Participants of the present investigation were predominately monolingual speakers of Northern Russian. In contrast, Chen (1970) and Pye (1986) tested Russian-speaking residents of the USA or the UK who were proficient in English. The data in Kulikov (2012) came from the Southern Russian dialectal region that borders Ukraine. Both English and Ukrainian are non-neutralizing and speakers' exposure to such languages has been argued to affect incomplete neutralization in the language with final devoicing (Dmitrieva et al., 2010; Smith et al., 2009; also, see Iverson & Salmons, 2011; Kohler, 2007; Winter & Röttger, 2011). Finally, individual-level variation and differences in sample sizes may also account for the differences in findings. Results from small samples of speakers or stimulus items may be easily affected by the performance of outliers and may not be representative of the behaviors of larger groups. To ensure that the current findings could be generalized to larger populations, the present study tested 78 speakers and 150 stimulus words. In contrast, Chen (1970) examined five pairs of stimulus items that were pronounced by one Russian speaker. The data in Pye (1986) came from five participants, and Kulikov (2012) examined a total of six item pairs. Thus, the presence of differences in vowel duration in the latter studies may represent individual-level strategies. This is especially likely considering that prominent individual differences have been found for the voicing contrast in word-medial consonants in Russian (Burton & Robblee, 1997), which shows that robust variability exists even in non-neutralizing environments. 4.5. Theoretical implications Results of the current study reveal that final devoicing involves two types of processes: (i) complete neutralization of differences in phonetic voicing and (ii) incomplete neutralization of differences in closure/frication duration and release duration. This suggests that the devoicing process targets a particular phonetic parameter rather than the [voice] feature in general. Following Steriade (2000), this type of behavior is best represented as a suppression of the primary phonetic cue that signals the underlying contrast in the grammar rather than complete identity of the devoiced obstruent to the voiceless member of the voiced-voiceless opposition (cf.: Kiparsky, 1976). For Russian, the primary cue appears to be vocal fold vibration, which is also the cue that speakers manipulate when underlying voicing becomes relevant for context-dependent reasons (e.g., in hyperarticulated speech). Differences in consonantal duration appear to be nonprimary and, as such, they are allowed to remain in phonetic outputs. Non-primary cues may be more relevant in non-neutralizing environments and may therefore be attested throughout the word's paradigm, yet they do not seem to support the voicing distinction at the grammatical level and they are not used consistently even when the voicing contrast is made relevant by the experimental methodology. The selective targeting of the vocal fold vibration cue only when the experimental paradigm creates a contextual need to disambiguate the voicing setting of word-final obstruents also favors those formal models that allow differentiation between core phonology that deals with language use in general and peripheral phonology that accounts for language use in particular situations, such as in laboratory speech or when pronouncing newly encountered and borrowed lexical items (e.g., the ‘co-phonology’ analysis of vowel reduction in native versus non-nativized words in Crosswhite, 2001). More generally, the present results corroborate the view that final devoicing is an interactive process that is sensitive to both grammatical and methodological influences and that a comprehensive model of neutralization needs to account for the effects of not only underlying voicing but also lexical, paradigmatic, orthographic, and many other factors that have already been identified in the literature on final devoicing (among others, see Charles-Luce, 1997; Warner et al., 2004) as well as those factors that are yet to be discovered.

5. Conclusions The present study examined incomplete neutralization in word-final stops and fricatives in Russian. The main goal of the investigation was to determine how partial preservation of underlying voicing varied across (i) different types of obstruents and stimulus words and (ii) different types of experimental tasks and stimulus lists. Effects of underlying voicing were observed for consonantal duration and glottal pulsing but not preceding vowel duration. Differences in consonantal duration showed sensitivity to phonological and lexical properties of the stimuli and were found in both reading and non-reading tasks and regardless of whether or not minimal pairs were included in the experimental list. Differences in glottal pulsing were observed across all stimulus types but they were significant only during word-reading or when speakers encountered minimally-contrasting item pairs. These findings show that, for some acoustic parameters, neutralization is incomplete even in the absence of orthographic representations or minimal pairs and it varies depending on the phonological and lexical properties of the stimuli. Other phonetic differences are motivated primarily by methodological factors. In the theoretical domain, these results are argued to favor a less restrictive definition of neutralization and a model of phonology that views devoicing as a loss of the primary acoustic cue to underlying voicing rather than complete identity of the [voiced] feature.

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