Word-final devoicing in Russian by Mayuki Matsui of Hiroshima U

"Phonetics-phonology interface and beyond: Word-final devoicing in Russian"

It is well known that in many languages, voiced obsrtuents alternate to the voiceless counterparts in word-final position, which is referred to as word-final devoicing. In this talk, I will address the phonetics of the word-final devoicing in a case study of Russian, which is in close relation to an outstanding issue not merely in Russian phonetics, but also in modular-based linguistic models of phonetic implementation. The talk consists of three parts; In the first part, I will briefly review the background of Russian word-final devoicing and the assumptions of the phonetics-phonology interface theories. In the second part, I will present a series of acoustic and perceptual studies of Russian, mainly based on Matsui (2015, dissertation) and Matsui et al. (2017). Finally, future perspectives of this research, including an interplay of morphology-phonetics-phonology in the "new" vocative expression, will be addressed in the closing remarks.