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In phonology, voicing (or sonorization) is a sound change where a voiceless consonant becomes voiced due to the influence of its phonological environment; shift in the opposite direction is referred to as devoicing or surdization. Most commonly, the change is a result of sound assimilation with an adjacent sound of opposite voicing, but it can also occur word-finally or in contact with a specific vowel.

For example, the English suffix -s is pronounced when it follows a voiceless phoneme (cats), and when it follows a voiced phoneme (dogs). This type of assimilation is called progressive, where the second consonant assimilates to the first; regressive assimilation goes in the opposite direction, as can be seen in have to .

English

English no longer has a productive process of voicing stem-final fricatives when forming noun-verb pairs or plural nouns, but there are still examples of voicing from earlier in the history of English:

• belief () – believe ()
• shelf () – shelve ()
• grief () – grieve ()
• life () – live ()
• proof () – prove ()
• strife () – strive ()
• thief () – thieve ()
• bath () - bathe ()
• breath () - breathe ()
• mouth (, n.) – mouth (, vb.)
• sheath () - sheathe ()
• wreath () - wreathe ()
• advice () – advise ()
• house (, n.) – house (, vb.)
• use (, n.) – use (, vb.)

Synchronically, the assimilation at morpheme boundaries is still productive, such as in:

• cat + s → cats
• dog + s → dogs ()
• miss + ed → missed ()
• whizz + ed → whizzed ()

The voicing alternation found in plural formation is losing ground in the modern language,. Of the alternations listed below many speakers retain only the pattern, which is supported by the orthography. This voicing of /f/ is a relic of Old English, at a time when the unvoiced consonants between voiced vowels were 'colored' by an allophonic voicing (lenition) rule /f/ → . As the language became more analytic and less inflectional, final vowels or syllables stopped being pronounced. For example, modern knives is a one syllable word instead of a two syllable word, with the vowel e not pronounced and no longer part of the word's structure. The voicing alternation between and occurs now as realizations of separate phonemes /f/ and /v/. The alternation pattern is well maintained for the items listed immediately below, but its loss as a productive allophonic rule permits its abandonment for new usages of even well-established terms: while leaf~leaves in reference to 'outgrowth of plant stem' remains vigorous, the Toronto ice hockey team is uncontroversially named the Maple Leafs.

• knife – knives
• leaf – leaves
• wife – wives
• wolf – wolves

The following mutations are optional:

• bath () - baths ()
• mouth () - mouths ()
• oath () - oaths ()
• path () - paths ()
• youth () - youths ()
• house () – houses ()

Sonorants (/l r w j/) following aspirated fortis plosives (that is, /p t k/ in the onsets of stressed syllables unless preceded by /s/) are devoiced such as in please, crack, twin, and pewter.

Several varieties of English have a productive synchronic rule of /t/-voicing whereby intervocalic /t/ not followed by a stressed vowel is realized as voiced alveolar flap , as in tutor, with the first /t/ pronounced as voiceless aspirated and the second as voiced . Voiced phoneme /d/ can also emerge as , so that tutor and Tudor may be homophones, both with (the voiceless identity of word-internal /t/ in tutor is manifested in tutorial, where stress shift assures ).

In other languages

Voicing assimilation

In many languages, including Polish and Russian, there is anticipatory assimilation of unvoiced obstruents immediately before voiced obstruents. For example, Russian просьба 'request' is pronounced /ˈprozʲbə/ (instead of */ˈprosʲbə/) and Polish prośba 'request' is pronounced /ˈprɔʑba/ (instead of */ˈprɔɕba/). The process can cross word boundaries as well: Russian дочь бы /ˈdod͡ʑ bɨ/ 'daughter would'. The opposite type of anticipatory assimilation happens to voiced obstruents before unvoiced ones: обсыпать /ɐpˈs̪ɨpətʲ/.

In Italian, /s/ before a voiced consonant is pronounced within any phonological word: sbaglio 'mistake', slitta 'sled', snello 'slender'. The rule applies across morpheme boundaries (disdire 'cancel') and word boundaries (lapis nero 'black pencil'). This voicing is productive and so it applies also to borrowings, not only to native lexicon: snob .

Final devoicing

Final devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as German, Dutch, Polish, Russian and Catalan. Such languages have voiced obstruents in the syllable coda or at the end of a word become voiceless.

Initial voicing

Initial voicing is a process of historical sound change in which voiceless consonants become voiced at the beginning of a word. For example, modern German sagen , Yiddish זאָגן , and Dutch zeggen (all "say") all begin with , which derives from in an earlier stage of Germanic, as is still attested in English say, Swedish säga , and Icelandic segja . Some English dialects were affected as well, but it is rare in Modern English. One example is fox (with the original consonant) compared to vixen (with a voiced consonant).

Notes

1. Grijzenhout (2000), p. 3.
2. Grijzenhout (2000), p. 9.
3. Roach (2004), p. 240.
4. Nasukawa, Kuniya; Backley, Phillip, eds. (2 June 2009). "Strength Relations in Phonology". Studies in Generative Grammar. 103. ISBN 9783110218596.

References

• Roach, Peter (2004), "British English: Received Pronunciation", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34 (2): 239–245, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001768
• Grijzenhout, Janet (2000), Voicing and devoicing in English, German, and Dutch; evidence for domain-specific identity constraints (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-19, retrieved 2009-12-18

• Phonology
• Phonotactics
• Assimilation (linguistics)