Phonological neutralization by native and non-native speakers: The case of Russian final devoicing

The present study investigates the extent of word-final devoicing in Russian for three groups of speakers: monolingual native Russian speakers (4 Ss), native Russian speakers with knowledge of English (7 Ss), and American English learners of Russian (9 Ss). Thirty-four minimal pairs of Russian words differing in the underlying voicing of word-final obstruents were recorded. Acoustic analysis focused on four measures: preceding vowel duration, closure/frication duration, duration of voicing into closure/frication, and duration of release portion. Results indicate the absence of complete neutralization of underlying voicing for all three groups. Native Russian speakers showed sizeable differences in each of the four measures. While Russian monolingual speakers produced significant durational differences in closure/frication duration and release duration, native Russians with knowledge of English in addition maintained a difference through vowel duration and duration of voicing into closure/frication. Moreover, correlations indicated that speakers with higher English proficiency produced greater differences for vowel duration. In addition, native speakers of English learning Russian also distinguished final obstruents in terms of preceding vowel duration, closure/frication duration, duration of voicing into closure/frication, and duration of release portion, with greater durational differences for these second language learners than for Russian native speakers. The more proficient speakers of Russian decreased the durational differences and the most proficient second language learners were closer to complete neutralization than monolingual speakers of Russian. The neutralization data will be discussed in terms of the interaction between first and second language in the production of final devoicing.