Final devoicing and vowel lengthening in Friulian : a representational approach

Abstract

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 geometrymay 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.