devoicing

Devoicing is the phonetic process by which a voiced sound becomes voiceless. It is most commonly discussed in relation to consonants, especially obstruents such as stops, fricatives, and affricates. Voicing is produced by periodic vibration of the vocal folds; devoicing reduces or eliminates this vibration, resulting in a voiceless sound.

A prominent manifestation is final or coda devoicing, in which obstruents at the end of a syllable or word are realized without voicing. In many Germanic languages, this neutralization of the voicing contrast in coda position is systematic. For example, a word that underlyingly ends with a voiced obstruent may be pronounced with a voiceless ending in everyday speech.

Devoicing can also occur through assimilation, where a voiced sound becomes voiceless in the environment of a preceding or following voiceless segment. This regressive assimilation helps align the phonation of adjacent sounds and is a common mechanism by which voicing contrasts are conditioned or reduced across word boundaries and phrases.

In analysis, final devoicing is often described as a neutralization of the voicing contrast in coda position and is a standard feature cited in descriptions of the relevant languages. It is not universal: some languages maintain voicing contrasts in all positions, and in others devoicing occurs only in particular phonological or morphological contexts or in careful speech.

The phenomenon has implications for phonology, morphology, and historical linguistics, since it affects how phonemes are realized in surface forms and how sound change can alter the size of a phoneme inventory over time.