Abstract
A number of languages manifest a pattern of word-final obstruent devoicing, i.e., words ending with underlying voiced obstruents are pronounced so as to be (largely) indistinguishable from words ending with final voiceless obstruents. One question regarding this tendency to devoice voiced obstruent targets is what occurs when native speakers of such a language learn a second language that has a word-final obstruent voicing contrast. For example, do German speakers neutralize voicing contrasts in English as they tend to do in German, or can they learn to produce voiced obstruents in Englis, despite devoicing them in German? To examine this issue, ten native speakers of German produced various phonologically-similar minimal pairs in German and English (e.g., English: Lied/light; German: Leid/leit). Acoustic measurements were made of their productions in both languages, viz., vowel duration preceding final consonants, final consonant duration, duration of voicing during final consonants, and final release burst duration; their English productions were also compared to those of native English speakers. The native German speakers tended to neutralize the voicing distinction to a greater extent when producing German words versus phonologically-similar English words, but they typically did not produce as much of a contrast in English as native English speakers.
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