German syllable-final devoicing

In Standard German, voiced obstruents in syllable coda position become voiceless,6but this process is calculated only with the inclusion of all morphemes and not sooner. Consider the data in (89). Following the traditional analysis, the examples in (89) show that underlying voiced obstruents, such as/d/inkind/kInd/, are devoiced in when they appear in syllable coda position (Kind[kInt]) but maintain their underlying voice when they appear in the onset (kindisch[kIn.dIS]).

5_{Note that defining “lexical” as an M-Word containing a root node would also be possible. These alternate definitions} could be distinguished with investigation into places where roots and category defining heads to not always appear together, such as light verbs or light versus heavy prepositions. This point will not be pursued here because both versions of the “lexical” condition are subsets of the non-minimal condition.

6_{There has been some argument in the phonetics and experimental phonology literature about whether devoicing in} German is truly neutralization or not (see Roettger et al. 2014, and sources cited therein). For the purposes here, it does not really matter whether the outcome of the devoicing process is the same as an underlyingly voiceless consonant. Rather, I am concerned with diagnosing where the devoicing process occurs with respect to phonological and morphosyntactic structure.

(89) Syllable-final devoicing in German (Rubach 1990; Wiese 1996b) • Kind[-t]"child"∼kindisch[-d-]"childish"

• Ausland[-t]"foreign countries"∼Ausländer[-d-]"foreigner" • trüb[-p]"cloudy, opaque"∼Trübung[-b-]"cloudiness, opacity"

• kräftig/-g/→/-G/→[-ç]7"strong, powerful"∼Kräftigend[-g-]"bracing, invigorating" • Grund[-t]"ground, bottom"∼grundlos[-t-]"groundless, unfounded"

∼Gründung[-d-]"foundation, establishment"

This devoicing process is sensitive to all the phonological content corresponding to the mor- phemes within the M-Word domain. That is, if this devoicing were a process applying cyclically with each affix (or if phonology was only active within syntactic phases, see Section 3.11) we might expect the /d/ ofGründing, for example, to be devoiced at the inner verb head, before the addition of the outer noun head-ung, see (90).

(90) Structure ofGründung8 n n /-uN/ v v ; p GRUND /grund/ Linearization: [ /grund/⊕; ⊕/uN/ ]M

M-Word⇒ř-Word: ( /grund/ +;+ /uN/ )ř

Phonological Grouping: ( /grund + uN/ )ř

Ingrundung, if theř-Level phonology occurred at the time where only the innervhead and the root were in consideration, ( /grund/ +; )ř, we would expect the the /d/to be devoiced because

it would be syllabified in the coda. However, theř-Level process of devoicing must wait until the entire M-Word is calculated, resulting in the /d/ being syllabified in the onset of the following syllable (Gründung[gryn.duN]) and thus not subject to devoicing.

The story is not quite so simple, given that there are minimal pairs which show the same sequence of phonemes with devoicing in one case but not in another, as shown in (91):

(91) Minimal pairs for devoicing (Rubach 1990)

7_{The spirantization (and fronting) of/g/does not happen in all dialects of German. In these dialects, forms like this} end in a final[-k], as expected.

• Handlung[-d-]"action" vs. handlich[-t-]"handy"

Exponents: Hand -l -ung hand -; -lich

Morphemes: pHAND v n pHAND n a

• neblig[-b-]"foggy" vs. glaublich[-p-]"believable"

Exponents: nebl

" -; -ig glaub -; -lich

Morphemes: pNEBL v a pGLAUB v a

• eignen[-g-]"own" vs. Zeugnis[-k-]"testimony"

Exponents: eign

" -; -en Zeug -; -nis

Morphemes: pEIGN v ASP pZEUG v n

Without reference to morphological constituency, each of the pairs in (91) show the relevant consonant in approximately the same environment, but in one case there is devoicing and not in another case. Thus, it is clear that the syllabification and devoicing processes must be sensitive to morphological structure. Rubach (1990) proposes that (i) German readily uses liquids and nasals as syllable nuclei and (ii) syllabification in German is cyclic.9 Adopting Rubach’s proposals, we can demonstrate that devoicing is ař-Level process and that theř-Level is not calculated until the M-Word.

To derive, for example, theHan[d]lung∼han[t]lichcase, we need to assume that the innervand

nheads are marked as cyclic morphemes while the overt-ungand-lichare not.10 The derivations are shown in (92):

(92) Derivation ofHan[d]lungvs.han[t]lich11

a. Vocabulary Items:

•pHAND↔/hand/ •vl↔/l/+ •nung↔/uN/

/

v

•n↔ ;+ •alich↔/liç/

/

n

9_{Note that English has a similar set of minimal pairs with respect to the syllabification of liquids, for exampletwinkling}

[twINk.lIN]"a short instant" versustwinkling[twIN.kl

".IN]"the act of varying repeatedly between bright and faint" (Marvin

2002).

10_{For this example, at least, the inner- vs. outer-attachment distinction seems to hold up for German phonology.} 11_{It is possible, given the non-transparent semantic relationship between the nounHand"hand" and the verbhandel-} "act", that speakers may have two distinct roots (pHANDandpHANDL). If this is the case, then thevexponent would be phonologically null but the rest of the derivation would be the same. The derivation in which both words are derived from the same root is shown here as an example of a minimal pair.

b. Phonological Processes:

• (Cyclic) Syllabification

• (ř-Level) Devoicing of voiced obstruents in syllable coda c. Structure, Linearization and Phonological Grouping ofHan[d]lungandhan[t]lich

n nung /-uN/ v vl /l/+ p HAND /hand/

Lin.: [pHAND⊕vl ⊕nung ]M

M⇒ř: (/hand/+/l/++/-uN/ )ř a alich /-liç/ n n ;+ p HAND /hand/

Lin.: [pHAND⊕n⊕alich ]M

M⇒ř: (/hand/+;++/-liç/ )ř

d. Phonology: Cyclic andř-Level

1. Integration of root pHAND pHAND

1a. Vocabulary Insertion: /hand/ /hand/

1b. No adjacent buffer, create new buffer hand hand

1c. No cyclic phonology, nothing to integrate

2. Integration of next node pHAND⊕vl pHAND⊕n

2a. Vocabulary Insertion: hand +/l/+ hand+;+

2b. Add node to buffer handl hand

2c. Cyclic Phonology: Syllabification .han.dl. .hand.

3. Integration of next node pHAND⊕vl⊕nung pHAND⊕n⊕alich

3a. Vocabulary Insertion: .han.dl. +/-uN/ .hand. +/-liç/

3b. Non-cyclic node, no addition to buffer

4. All morphemes within M-Word integrated, send toř-Level phonology

ř-Level Phonology, Input: .han.dl.uN. .hand.liç.

(ř-Level) Devoicing: — hant.liç

Output: handluN12 hantliç

In the derivations in (92), the addition of the cyclic nodes in Step 2 triggers the cyclic process of syllabification. This results in a difference in syllabification of the/d/between the two derivations, ultimately leading to the difference in the application of voicing. Note that in Step 3,/-liç/cannot be a cyclic morpheme because otherwise it would trigger resyllabification, resulting in/.han.dl.iç./

(mirroring Handlung). Additionally, an alternative solution, in which devoicing is a cyclic rule, rather than ař-Level rule, cannot work because devoicing cannot to apply at Step 2c to/.hand./. This is proven by the existence of forms such as Hände[hEnd@], which is the plural of the basic nounHand. If devoicing applied cyclically at Step 2, the resulting form ofHändewould be *[hEnt@]

because the/d/would be devoiced in Step 2, and there is no “revoicing” process. Thus, in order to correctly derive the output, we need to follow Rubach’s proposals that syllabification is cyclic and devoicing isř-Level.

More critically to the discussion at hand, this example shows that, although cyclic processes may alter the structure and change the eligibility of a segment to undergo ař-Level process, the

ř-Level phonology does not apply until the entire M-Word is under consideration.