Voicing contrast in consonant clusters: evidence against sonorant transparency to voice assimilation in Russian

Abstract

Obstruents in Russian have been claimed to assimilate in voicing in clusters when a sonorant consonant intervenes, e.g. ot mgly [dmg] ' from the haze '. This phenomenon ('sonorant transparency to voice assimilation ') is controversial : it is claimed to be a phonological rule of fast speech by some linguists, while its existence is denied by others. Previous studies have shown that voicing in presonorant obstruents (C1) in Russian is consistent with that of prevocalic obstruents in slow speech ; however, no research has examined whether voicing in presonorant obstruents changes either as a function of the voicing of the rightmost (C2) obstruent in a cluster or in faster speech. This paper presents experimental results supporting the claim that the voicing of C2 obstruents does not affect voicing in presonorant C1 obstruents in slow or fast speech. The results suggest that obstruents do not assimilate through a sonorant in obstruent-sonorant-obstruent clusters in Russian.

Effects of Speaking Rate and Sonority on Voicing Duration in Russian Obstruents

“…The results do not provide empirical support for claims in Jakobson (1978) about "sonorant transparency" to voice assimilation in Russian. Rather, the findings suggest that "sonorant transparency" might be a phonetic artefact emerging from two independent factors: (1) greater variability in duration of voicing found in Kulikov (2014) and (2) increase in duration of voicing in voiceless obstruents in longer clusters in faster speech (this study). Although the two processes may be driven by different articulatory mechanisms, they have the same effect of partially neutralizing the underlying contrast in phonetics.…”

“…Although the duration of voicing in Russian stops averages 98% of the closure (Ringen & Kulikov, 2012), some intervocalic stops in Russian can be incompletely voiced (Barry, 1995) such that voicing occurs in a range between 55% and 100% of closure (Ringen & Kulikov, 2012). Variation in closure voicing is greater in obstruents occurring in longer, obstruent-sonorantobstruent clusters (3c) 2 than in regular presonorant stops (Kulikov, 2014). Gradience is also a natural outcome in assimilating obstruent clusters.…”

Gradient Phonetic Implementation of Regressive Voicing Assimilation in Catalan Heterosyllabic Two- and Three-Consonant Clusters

“…Thus, judging from available data on obstruent + obstruent sequences, regressive voicing appears to be close to categorical in Russian where C1 voicing ratios are often about 90% or higher (Burton and Robblee, 1997;Kulikov, 2013), and more gradient in Hungarian with ratios intermediate between those for fully voiced and voiceless consonants (Gow and Im, 2004;Markó et al, 2010). Also regarding place assimilation in /nC/ sequences, C1-to-C2 adaptation has been reported to operate almost without exception in Spanish and Italian, i.e., C1 acquires the C2 closure or constriction location throughout its entire duration in practically all sequence tokens and for all speakers (Farnetani and Busà, 1994;Celata et al, 2013), and less often in English (see above).…”

Russian elision as lenition to zero

“…Similarly to obstruents, /v/ undergoes word-final devoicing; however, /v/ does not trigger voicing assimilation in consonant clusters, similar to Russian sonorants (Padgett 2002). As a voiced non-sibilant fricative, /v/ is also notably short and highly reduced in casual speech (Bjorndahl 2018;Kulikov 2013), which is likely related to its propensity for elision. According to Padgett, some of this behavior may be explained by hypothesizing that surface [v] is underlyingly /w/.…”

“…Certain words appear to exhibit both vowel and consonant elision; in fact, the consonant /v/ appears to be especially prone to elision, both individually and alongside a neighboring vowel (Bjorndahl 2018;Kulikov 2013;Padgett 2002;Pugh 1993).…”