the second word begins with a sonorant the voicing of any preceding word-final obstruent varies regionally. In western and southern Poland, final obstruents are voiced (voicing pronunciation) if the following word starts with a sonorant (here, for example, the in brat ojca 'father's brother' would be pronounced as ). On the other hand, they are voiceless (devoicing pronunciation) in eastern and northern Poland ( is pronounced ). This rule does not apply to prepositional clitics w, z, bez, przez, nad, pod, od, przed which are always voiced before sonorants. Hard and soft consonants Multiple palatalizations and some depalatalizations that took place in the history of Proto-Slavic and Polish have created quite a complex system of what are often called "soft" and "hard" consonants. These terms are useful in describing some inflection patterns and other morphological processes, but exact definitions of "soft" and "hard" may differ somewhat. "Soft" generally refers to the palatal nature of a consonant. The alveolo-palatal sounds ń, ś, ź, ć, dź are considered soft, as normally is the palatal j. The l sound is also normally classed as a soft consonant: like the preceding sounds, it cannot be followed by y but takes i instead. The palatalized velars , and might also be regarded as soft on this basis. Consonants not classified as soft are dubbed "hard". However, a subset of hard consonants, c, dz, sz, ż/rz, cz, dż, often derive from historical palatalizations (for example, rz usually represents a historical palatalized r) and behaves like the soft consonants in some respects (for example, they normally take e in the nominative plural). These sounds may be called "hardened" or "historically soft" consonants. The historical palatalized forms of some consonants have developed in Polish into noticeably different sounds: historical palatalized t, d, r have become the sounds now represented by ć, dź, rz respectively. Similarly palatalized s, z, n became the sounds ś, ź, ń. The palatalization of labials has resulted (according to the main phonological analysis given in the sections above) in the addition of , as in the example pies just given. These developments are reflected in some regular morphological changes in Polish grammar, such as in noun declension. Phonological status of palatalized consonants In some phonological descriptions of Polish, however, consonants, including especially the labials m, p, b, f, w, are regarded as occurring in "hard" and "soft" pairs. In this approach, for example, the