Final devoicing in bulgarian: incomplete neutralization and l2 experience

The present study examined the phonetic realization of word-final devoicing in Bulgarian. First, we asked whether final devoicing in Bulgarian was phonetically incomplete. Second, we asked whether the degree of any incompleteness was associated with greater L2 experience in a language without final devoicing (English), as such apparent L1 attrition has been reported previously for Russian. Production results from 34 native Bulgarian speakers indicated final devoicing to be (1) phonetically incomplete, at the group level, on two acoustic measures, and (2) more severe in speakers with more L2 English experience on two (other) acoustic measures. However, the magnitude of the differences was very small, in line with previous findings on incomplete devoicing in other languages, and likely suggests variation in subtle subphonemic patterns rather than genuine attrition of a grammatical process.