Obstruents

Final devoicing

Wood (1987: 132) maintains that a typical feature of Extreme CFE is devoicing of final /d/ and /z/ (e.g. eight hundred , seconds ). I would claim, on the basis of my own data, that CFE generally has a (variable) rule of final-obstruent devoicing (terminal devoicing), whereby all obstruents will tend to be voiceless (lenis) in syllable-final position (that is, final /b d g v ð z Ʒ/ will typically be realized as ). Additionally, in my data /g/ and /ʤ/ – phonemes not occurring in CVA – were often devoiced also in initial position. On devoicing in CFE.