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In articulatory phonetics, fortition, also known as strengthening, is a consonantal change that increases the degree of stricture. It is the opposite of the more common lenition. For example, a fricative or an approximant may become a stop consonant (i.e. becomes or becomes ). Although not as typical of sound change as lenition, fortition may occur in prominent positions, such as at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable; as an effect of reducing markedness; or due to morphological leveling.
Fortition of the cross-linguistically rare interdental fricatives and to the almost universal corresponding stops and is relatively common. This has occurred in most continental Germanic languages and several English dialects, several Uralic languages, and a few Semitic languages, among others. This has the result of reducing the markedness of the sounds and .
Fortition also frequently occurs with voiceless versions of the common lateral approximant , usually sourced from combinations of with a voiceless obstruent. The product is a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative .
In Welsh language, words inherited from Proto-Celtic with initial or hardened to and , respectively. Examples: Old Welsh lau to Modern Welsh llaw ; Old Welsh ros to Modern Welsh rhos .
In the Cushitic language Iraqw language, *d has lenited to between vowels, but *r has undergone fortition to word initially.
In Friulian, > : yoyba, jobia > dobia, doba; gel > dal; Lat. iuvenis > doven; Lat. iunius > dun.Sach- und Sprachatlas Italiens, sub vocibus
Gemination of word-initial consonants occurs in Italian language if a word-final stressed vowel precedes without intervening pause, in a process known as syntactic gemination. Final stressed vowels are by nature short, and short stressed vowels precede a consonant within a (phonetic) word only if that consonant ends the syllable. An item such as comprò 's/he bought' thus triggers gemination of the following consonant, whereas compra 's/he buys/is buying' does not: comprò la pasta 's/he bought the pasta' but compra la pasta 's/he buys/is buying the pasta'.
In addition to language-internal development, fortition can also occur when a language acquires loanwords. Goidelic languages frequently display fortition in loanwords as most initial (except for , and ) are disallowed in the Dictionary form of Goidelic words. Thus initial fricatives of loanwords are strengthened to the corresponding Lenition variant or the nearest equivalent if the fricative is not part of the phoneme inventory.
Examples from Scottish Gaelic:MacBain, A. (1911) An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language. Gairm.
| Scots language vervane, werwane ‘vervain’ → bearbhain |
| Scots language quhel ‘wheel’ → cuidheall |
| Middle English wall → balla |
| Latin fundus → bonn (foundation) |
| Norse language þrǣll → tràill (slave) |
| Scots language hogsheid ‘hogshead’ → tocasaid |
| English language yawl → geòla |
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