Demystifying incomplete neutralisation during final devoicing

Phonetic incompleteness during final devoicing has been subject to some debate, particularly as far as the reliability of the data and the proper explanation of incompleteness are concerned. This paper approaches final devoicing and incompleteness from the perspective of the functions they perform in the phonological system. Production and perception data on final devoicing in Afrikaans are presented. The data indicate that under more natural speaking conditions, final devoicing is complete, but various reflexes of incomplete neutralisation are observed under different types of experimental conditions. When they are present, some of these reflexes do play a role in the perception of the difference between word pairs ending on underlying voiced and voiceless plosives. The interpretation of the data proposed in the paper is that final devoicing itself is a complete and categorical process affecting the feature [voice], aimed at maintaining the perceptual salience of final obstruents generally. However, when pragmatic factors should demand the maintenance of the otherwise neutralised opposition, Afrikaans speakers implement a phonetic difference along the dimension of the complementary feature [tense], leading to incomplete phonemic neutralisation, to perform the function of disambiguation. (S/ern Af Linguistics & Applied Language Stud: 2003 21(1&2): 49-66