Emancipating lenes

Abstract

I argue that English has no voicing assimilation, in fact, it does not have phonologically voiced segments at all. Voicing in English is spontaneous in sonorants, while obstruents may be phonetically voiced only if lenis and surrounded by spontaneously or passively voiced sounds. The paper claims that most obstruent clusters of English are traditionally misanalysed as fortis+fortis clusters. These clusters are all either fortis+lenis or lenis+fortis; in fact, fortis+fortis clusters are completely ruled out in English.