Re: final obstruent devoicing

En réponse à Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:

>
> Surely French has final voiced obstuents in words like _grande_?
>
Yep! French doesn't devoice its final consonants. It has a phenomenon of
devoicing with final 'd' (so your example is interesting), but it's quite
different. The final 'd' of 'grand' (big, masculine) is normally not
pronounced, except when the following word begins with a vowel, in which case
it's pronounced [t] (we say 'un grand homme': [9~gRa~'tOm]). But when it's
feminine ('grande'), the final 'd' is always pronounced, and always pronounced
[d]. So this devoicing is quite different from what happens in German (though
it could have a common origin. After all, although the final 'e' is not
pronounced anymore, it used to be a clear schwa). My guess would be that Old
and/or Middle French devoiced their final consonants, but by the loss of final
schwas final voiced consonants were reintroduced.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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