The role of vowel type, preceding consonant and lexical frequency on final vowel devoicing in Continental French

Final vowel devoicing is a feature of Continental French in which utterance-final vowels lose their voicing and produce fricative-like whistles. Previous studies have examined the phenomenon’s phonological and pragmatic tendencies, revealing its preference for high vowels in open syllables at the ends of statements. Here, we re-examine and expand upon previous work by investigating the role of vowel type, preceding consonant and lexical frequency. Results reveal that high rounded vowels devoice more frequently than high unrounded ones, and that stops precede devoiced vowels at significantly higher rates than fricatives or sonorants. No significant effect was found for voicing in the preceding segment. A slight effect for lexical frequency was also found, such that words that were more frequent were more likely to be realized with a devoiced vowel. This suggests that although final devoicing is heavily predictable via phonological constraints, it also exists on the lexical level.