[Corpora-List] is devoicing a new tendency in world languages?

[Yuri Tambovtsev]

Dear Corpora colleagues, many of you are working with different corpora in different languages, so you may know. I'm interested in devoicing of consonants at the end of the word, not only in Slavonic, but all world languages. It looks like devoicing does not depend on the language family since in the same language family there are languages with and without devoicing. Even in language groups, which are smaller language taxons, there may be languages with and without devoicing at the end of the word: e.g. in the Germanic group of the Indo-European language family - in German there is devoicing, but in English there is no devoicing. In the Slavonic group of the Indo-European family: devoicing in Russian, Belorussian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Slovene, but no devoicing in Serbian, Croatian, Old Russian or Ukrainian. I wonder if devoicing is the new tendency in languages or on the contrary, the old phonetic law? Was there devoicing at the end of words in Old Greek, Latin, Hebrew, old Persian, Sanscrit, old Turkic, etc? Looking forward to your opinions to yutamb at hotmail.com Be well! Remain yours most respectfully Yuri Tambovtsev  e-mail: yutamb at hotmail.com 
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