THE EFFECTS OF SEMANTIC CONTEXT ON VOICING NEUTRALIZATION

The present study examined regressive voice assimilation in Catalan in an attempt to determine a systematic explanation of complete versus i ncomplete voicing neutralization. Two types of contexts were construct ed. In one type, semantic information was present to bias the meaning of target words. In the other type, no semantic information was presen t. The results showed that vowel duration distinguished underlying voi cing in the neutral context only. The results suggest that neutralizat ion occurs when semantic information is present, but that a voicing co ntrast is realized when it is absent.