German fricatives: coda devoicing or positional faithfulness?

256 Jill Beckman, Michael Jessen and Catherine Ringen
(26)
[—voice, +sg] input
pre/s—v, +sg/en *[voi,sg] *VoiCoda Id[voi]
a. pre[z+v,—sg]en
*!
b. pre[s—v, —sg]en
c. pre[z+v,+sg]en
d. pre[s—v,+sg]en
*!
*
Id[sg]
*!
*!
*VoiObs
*
*
*[sg]
*
*
When the input voiceless fricative is specified as [+sg], this approach does
derive a representational difference between two classes of voiceless fricatives;
passive voicing could apply to segments specified as [lvoice, lsg],
but not to those specified as [lvoice, +sg].
There is, however, a significant problem for this binary feature approach:
it predicts the existence of a third, unattested, category of fricatives.
Consider the case of an input specified as [lvoice, lsg] (as required by
Richness of the Base).
(27)
Hypothetical [—voice, —sg] input
pre/z—v,—sg/en
a. pre[s—v,+sg]en
b. pre[z+v,—sg]en
c. pre[z+v,+sg]en
d. pre[s—v,—sg]en
*[voi,sg] *VoiCoda Id[voi]
*!
*!
*
Id[sg]
*!
*
*VoiObs
*
*
*[sg]
*
*
(In the phonetics, PassiveVoice yields *pre[z]en, with variable voicing.)
As (27) shows, the result of a [lvoice, lsg] input is a [lvoice, lsg] output
which will be subject to phonetic re-voicing regardless of its prosodic affiliation.
In other words, these fricatives would show variable voicing in
both onset and coda position, yielding three distinct classes of intersonorant
fricatives: (i) non-alternating voiceless fricatives, (ii) fricatives
which are voiced in onsets and variably voiced in codas and (iii) fricatives
which are variably voiced in both coda and onset position. This third class
of intersonorant fricatives is not attested.
In order to avoid generating a three-way fricative contrast, the binary
feature analysis can be supplemented with FRIC[sg]. This will have the
desirable effect of collapsing the spurious contrast between the two classes
of [lvoice] fricatives, as illustrated in (28).