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what is the phonological change that caused the voicing alternation / difference between the words breath and breathe?

  1. word-final devoicing
  2. intervocalic voicing
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To the extent that it's reliable, a section in the Wikipedia article about Middle English phonology says

In Old English, [v], [ð], [z] were allophones of /f/, /θ/, /s/, respectively, occurring between vowels or voiced consonants.

There are many remnants of this today, without a general rule other than that the voiced version tends to be a verb: grass/graze, glass/glaze, breath/breathe, loose/lose, house(n.)/house(v.), bath/bathe, cloth/clothe, half/halve, calf/calve, life/live. For the nouns ending in /f/, the voicing is often retained before the plural ending -s: half/halves, calf/calves, roof/rooves, hoof/hooves, wife/wives, life/lives, wharf/wharves, loaf/loaves.

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  • it is an intervocalic voicing, then, right?
    – User384789
    Commented Mar 22, 2018 at 17:32
  • That's my interpretation. And it goes way back: Dutch and German have similar unvoiced terminals that are voiced when followed by a vowel, including in their cognates for at least a few of these words.
    – Green Grasso Holm
    Commented Mar 22, 2018 at 19:14

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