Voiced obstruents in L2 French: the case of Swiss German learners

Abstract

The phonemic inventory of French coherently exploits the contrast between voiced and unvoiced obstruents. This opposition is distinctive in almost all phonotactic contexts, with two exceptions: i) /z/ does not occur word-initially; ii) the feature [±voice] may be assimilated in accordance with a following obstruent. Quite a different system is found in Swiss German dialects, where pairs of obstruents sharing the same place and manner of articulation are not differentiated through the presence/absence of laryngeal activity, but rather Show more