In phonology, voicing (or sonorization) is a sound change where a voiceless consonant becomes voiced due to the influence of its phonological environment; shift in the opposite direction is referred to as devoicing or desonorization. Most commonly, the change is a result of sound assimilation with an adjacent sound of opposite voicing, but it can also occur word-finally or in contact with a specific vowel.

For example, the English suffix -s is pronounced when it follows a voiceless phoneme (cats), and when it follows a voiced phoneme (dogs).^[1] This type of assimilation is called progressive, where the second consonant assimilates to the first; regressive assimilation goes in the opposite direction, as can be seen in have to .

English

English no longer has a productive process of voicing stem-final fricatives when forming noun-verb pairs or plural nouns, but there are still examples of voicing from earlier in the history of English:

• belief () – believe ()
• shelf () – shelve ()
• grief () – grieve ()
• life () – live ()
• proof () – prove ()
• strife () – strive ()
• thief () – thieve ()
• bath () - bathe ()
• breath () - breathe ()
• mouth (θ, n.) – mouth (ð, vb.)
• sheath (θ) - sheathe (ð)
• wreath (θ) - wreathe (ð)
• advice (s) – advise (z)
• house (s, n.) – house (z, vb.)
• use (s, n.) – use (z, vb.)

Synchronically, the assimilation at morpheme boundaries is still productive, such as in:^[2]

• cat + s → cats
• dog + s → dogs (ɡz)
• miss + ed → missed (st)
• whizz + ed → whizzed (zd)

The voicing alternation found in plural formation is losing ground in the modern language,^{[citation needed]}. Of the alternations listed below many speakers retain only the f-v pattern, which is supported by the orthography. This voicing of /f/ is a relic of Old English, at a time when the unvoiced consonants between voiced vowels were 'colored' by an allophonic voicing (lenition) rule /f/ → v. As the language became more analytic and less inflectional, final vowels or syllables stopped being pronounced. For example, modern knives is a one syllable word instead of a two syllable word, with the vowel e not pronounced and no longer part of the word's structure. The voicing alternation between f and v occurs now as realizations of separate phonemes /f/ and /v/. The alternation pattern is well maintained for the items listed immediately below, but its loss as a productive allophonic rule permits its abandonment for new usages of even well-established terms: while leaf~leaves in reference to 'outgrowth of plant stem' remains vigorous, the Toronto ice hockey team is uncontroversially named the Maple Leafs.

• knife – knives
• leaf – leaves
• wife – wives
• wolf – wolves

The following mutations are optional:^{[citation needed]}

• bath (θ) - baths (ð)
• mouth (θ) - mouths (ð)
• oath (θ) - oaths (ð)
• path (θ) - paths (ð)
• youth (θ) - youths (ð)
• house (s) – houses (z)

Sonorants (/l r w j/) following aspirated fortis plosives (that is, /p t k/ in the onsets of stressed syllables unless preceded by /s/) are devoiced such as in please, crack, twin, and pewter.^[3]

Several varieties of English have a productive synchronic rule of /t/-voicing whereby intervocalic /t/ not followed by a stressed vowel is realized as voiced alveolar flap ɾ, as in tutor, with the first /t/ pronounced as voiceless aspirated tʰ and the second as voiced ɾ. Voiced phoneme /d/ can also emerge as ɾ, so that tutor and Tudor may be homophones, both with ɾ (the voiceless identity of word-internal /t/ in tutor is manifested in tutorial, where stress shift assures tʰ).

In other languagesedit

Voicing assimilationedit

In many languages, including Polish and Russian, there is anticipatory assimilation of unvoiced obstruents immediately before voiced obstruents. For example, Russian просьба 'request' is pronounced /ˈprozʲbə/ (instead of */ˈprosʲbə/) and Polish prośba 'request' is pronounced /ˈprɔʑba/ (instead of */ˈprɔɕba/). The process can cross word boundaries as well: Russian дочь бы /ˈdod͡ʑ bɨ/ 'daughter would'. The opposite type of anticipatory assimilation happens to voiced obstruents before unvoiced ones: обсыпать /ɐpˈs̪ɨpətʲ/.

In Italian, /s/ before a voiced consonant is pronounced z within any phonological word: sbaglio ˈzbaʎʎo 'mistake', slitta ˈzlitta 'sled', snello ˈznɛllo 'slender'. The rule applies across morpheme boundaries (disdire dizˈdiːre 'cancel') and word boundaries (lapis nero ˌlaːpizˈneːro 'black pencil'). This voicing is productive and so it applies also to borrowings, not only to native lexicon: snob znɔb.

Final devoicingedit

Final devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as German, Dutch, Polish, Russian and Catalan.^{[4][page needed]} Such languages have voiced obstruents in the syllable coda or at the end of a word become voiceless.

Initial voicingedit

Initial voicing is a process of historical sound change in which voiceless consonants become voiced at the beginning of a word. For example, modern German sagen ˈzaːɡn̩, Yiddish זאָגן ˈzɔɡn̩, and Dutch zeggen ˈzɛɣə (all "say") all begin with z, which derives from s in an earlier stage of Germanic, as is still attested in English say, Swedish säga ˈsɛjːa, and Icelandic segja ˈseiːja. Some English dialects were affected as well, but it is rare in Modern English. One example is fox (with the original consonant) compared to vixen (with a voiced consonant).

Notesedit

Referencesedit

• Roach, Peter (2004), "British English: Received Pronunciation", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34 (2): 239–245, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001768
• Grijzenhout, Janet (2000), Voicing and devoicing in English, German, and Dutch; evidence for domain-specific identity constraints (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-19, retrieved 2009-12-18