| Abstract: | Some dialects of Dutch display an interesting systematic exception to an otherwise completely general and automatic process of final devoicing: the final fricatives of first person singular forms of verbs. It is argued in this article (i) that the fact that this exception always involves fricatives but no stops should be seen as an indication that the representation of voicing is different for fricatives than it is for stops in Dutch (more specifically, that the relevant underlying distinction is length for fricatives and not a feature [voice]), and (ii) that the morphological conditioning of this process cannot be seen as a paradigm effect but should rather be seen as the result of an empty vowel functioning as the first person singular morpheme. |
