Product Code Database
In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters , making them "weaker" in some way. The word lenition itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin lēnis 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language at a particular point in time) and diachronically (as a language changes over time). Lenition can involve such changes as voicing a voiceless consonant, causing a consonant to relax Occlusive, to lose its place of articulation (a phenomenon called debuccalization, which turns a consonant into a glottal consonant like or ), or even causing a consonant to disappear entirely.
An example of synchronic lenition is found in most varieties of American English, in the form of flapping: the of a word like wait is pronounced as the more sonorous in the related form waiting . Some varieties of Spanish language show debuccalization of to at the end of a syllable, so that a word like estamos "we are" is pronounced . An example of diachronic lenition can be found in the Romance languages, where the of Latin patrem ("father", accusative) has become in Italian language (an irregular change; compare saeta "silk" > seta) and Spanish padre (the latter weakened synchronically → ), while in Catalan pare, French père and Portuguese pai historical has disappeared completely.
In some languages, lenition has been grammaticalized into a consonant mutation, which means it is no longer triggered by its phonological environment but is now governed by its syntactic or morphological environment. For example, in Welsh language, the word cath "cat" begins with the sound , but after the definite article y, the changes to : "the cat" in Welsh is y gath. This was historically due to intervocalic lenition, but in the plural, lenition does not happen, so "the cats" is y cathod, not *y gathod. The change of to in y gath is thus caused by the syntax of the phrase, not by the modern phonological position of the consonant .
The opposite of lenition, fortition, a sound change that makes a consonant "stronger", is less common, but Breton and Cornish have "hard mutation" forms which represent fortition.
In examples below, a greater-than sign indicates that one sound changes to another. The notation > means that changes to .
The sound change of palatalization sometimes involves lenition.
Lenition includes the loss of a feature, such as deglottalization, in which glottalization or ejective articulation is lost: or > .
The tables below show common sound changes involved in lenition. In some cases, lenition may skip one of the sound changes. The change voiceless stop > fricative is more common than the series of changes voiceless stop > affricate > fricative.
| elision |
| (zero) |
| → |
| → |
| → |
| → |
Sonorizing lenition occurs especially often intervocalically (between vowels). In this position, lenition can be seen as a type of assimilation of the consonant to the surrounding vowels, in which features of the consonant that are not present in the surrounding vowels (e.g. obstruction, voicelessness) are gradually eliminated.
| → | → | → | → | elision |
| → | → | → | → | (zero) |
| → | → | → | ||
| → | → | |||
| → | → | → | → | |
| → | → | → | ||
| → | → | |||
| → | → | → | → | |
| → | → |
Some of the sounds generated by lenition are often subsequently "normalized" into related but cross-linguistically more common sounds. An example would be the changes → → and → → . Such normalizations correspond to diagonal movements down and to the right in the above table. In other cases, sounds are lenited and normalized at the same time; examples would be direct changes → or → .
Lenition can be seen in Canadian English and American English, where and soften to a tap (flapping) when not in initial position and followed by an unstressed vowel. For example, both rate and raid plus the suffix -er are pronounced . The Italian of Central and Southern Italy has a number of lenitions, the most widespread of which is the deaffrication of to between vowels: post-pausal cena 'dinner' but post-vocalic la cena 'the dinner'; the name Luciano, although structurally , is normally pronounced . In Tuscany, likewise is realized between vowels, and in typical speech of Central Tuscany, the voiceless stops in the same position are pronounced respectively , as in → 'the house', → 'hole'.
A similar development occurred in the Celtic languages, where non-geminate intervocalic consonants were converted into their corresponding weaker counterparts through lenition (usually stops into fricatives but also laterals and trills into weaker laterals and taps), and voiceless stops became voiced. For example, Indo-European intervocalic * in * "people" resulted in Proto-Celtic , Primitive Irish *tōθā, Old Irish and ultimately debuccalisation in most Irish and some Scottish dialects to , shift in Central Southern Irish to , and complete deletion in some Modern Irish and most Modern Scots Gaelic dialects, thus .
An example of historical lenition in the Germanic languages is evidenced by Latin-English cognates such as pater, tenuis, cornu vs. father, thin, horn. The Latin words preserved the original stops, which became fricatives in old Germanic by Grimm's law. A few centuries later, the High German consonant shift led to a second series of lenitions in Old High German, chiefly of post-vocalic stops, as evidenced in the English-German cognates ripe, water, make vs. reif, Wasser, machen.
Although actually a much more profound change encompassing syllable restructuring, simplification of geminate consonants as in the passage from Latin to Spanish such as cuppa > 'cup' is often viewed as a type of lenition (compare geminate-preserving Italian ).
| → : baca "cow" → sa baca "the cow" |
| → : domu "house" → sa domu "the house" |
| → : gupu "ladle" → su gupu "the ladle" |
Synchronic lenition in Scottish Gaelic affects almost all consonants (except , which has lost its lenited counterpart in most areas).Oftedal, M. (1956) The Gaelic of Leurbost Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap, Oslo Changes such as to involve the loss of secondary articulation; in addition, → involves the reduction of a trill consonant to a tap consonant. The spirantization of Gaelic nasal to is unusual among forms of lenition, but it is triggered by the same environment as more prototypical lenition. (It may also leave a residue of nasalization in adjacent vowels.)Ternes, E. (1989) The Phonemic Analysis of Scottish Gaelic Helmut Buske Verkag, Hamburg The orthography shows that by inserting an h (except after l n r).
Spirantization | ||
| bog "soft" → glé bhog "very soft" | ||
| beò 'alive' → glé bheò 'very alive' | ||
| cas "steep" → glé chas "very steep" | ||
| ciùin "quiet" → glé chiùin "very quiet" | ||
| dubh "black" → glé dhubh "very black" | ||
| deiseil "ready" → glé dheiseil "very ready" | ||
| garbh "rough" → glé gharbh "very rough" | ||
| geur "sharp" → glé gheur "very sharp" | ||
| maol "bald" → glé mhaol "very bald" | ||
| meallta "deceitful" → glé mheallta "very deceitful" | ||
| pongail "exact" → glé phongail "very exact" | ||
| peallagach "shaggy" → glé pheallagach "very shaggy" | ||
Loss of secondary articulation | ||
| nàdarra "natural" → glé nàdarra "very natural" | ||
| rag "stiff" → glé rag "very stiff" | ||
| lag "weak" → glé lag "very weak" (in Harris Gaelic only) | ||
Debuccalization | ||
| sona "happy" → glé shona "very happy" | ||
| seasmhach "constant" → glé sheasmhach "very constant" | ||
| seòlta "sly" → glé sheòlta "very sly" | ||
| tana "thin" → glé thana "very thin" | ||
| tinn "ill" → glé thinn "very ill" | ||
| teann "tight" → glé theann "very tight" | ||
Elision | ||
| fann "faint" → glé fhann "very faint" | ||
| feòrachail "inquisitive" → glé fheòrachail "very inquisitive" | ||
Reduction of place markedness | ||
| In the modern Goidelic languages, grammatical lenition also triggers the reduction of markedness in the place of articulation of coronal (l, r, and n sounds). In Scottish Gaelic, and are the weak counterparts of palatal and . | ||
| neulach "cloudy" → glé neulach "very cloudy" | ||
| leisg "lazy" → glé leisg "very lazy" | ||
In Brythonic languages, only fossilized vestiges of lenition blocking occur, for example in Welsh no s da 'good night' lenition is blocked (nos as a feminine noun normally causes lenition of a following modifier, for example Gwener 'Friday' yields nos Wener 'Friday night'). Within Celtic, blocked lenition phenomena also occur in Irish (for example ao n doras 'one door', an chéa d duine 'the first person') and Manx Gaelic (for example u n dorrys 'one door', yn chie d dooinney 'the first man') however.
Outside Celtic, in Spanish language orthographic b d g are retained as following nasals rather than their normal lenited forms .
Voicing lenition is represented by a simple letter switch in the Brythonic languages, for instance carreg, "stone" → y garreg, "the stone" in Welsh. In Irish orthography, it is shown by writing the "weak" consonant alongside the (silent) "strong" one: peann, "pen" → ár bpeann "our pen", ceann, "head" → ár gceann "our head" (sonorization is traditionally called "eclipsis" in Irish grammar).
Although nasalization as a feature also occurs in most Scottish Gaelic dialects, it is not shown in the orthography on the whole, as it is synchronic (the result of certain types of nasals affecting a following sound), rather than the diachronic Irish type sonorization (after historic nasals). For example taigh "house" → an taigh "the house".
An example with geminate consonants comes from Finnish language, where geminates become simple consonants while retaining voicing or voicelessness (e.g. katto → katon, dubbaan → dubata). It is also possible for entire consonant clusters to undergo lenition, as in Votic language, where voiceless clusters become voiced, e.g. itke- "to cry" → idgön.
If a language has no obstruents other than voiceless stops, other sounds are encountered, as in Finnish, where the lenited grade is represented by , , flap consonant or even trill consonant. For example, Finnish used to have a complete set of spirantization reflexes for , though these have been lost in favour of similar-sounding phonemes. In the Southern Ostrobothnian, Tavastian and southwestern dialects of Finnish, mostly changed into , thus the dialects have a synchronic lenition of an alveolar stop into an alveolar trill . Furthermore, the same phoneme undergoes assibilation → before the vowel , e.g. root vete- "water" → vesi and vere-. Here, vete- is the stem, vesi is its nominative, and vere- is the same stem under consonant gradation.
Italian, for example, presents numerous regular examples of word-initial fortition both historically (Lat. Januarius with initial > gennaio, with ) and synchronically (e.g., "house, home" → but "at home" → ).
Catalan is among numerous Romance languages with diachronic word-final devoicing (frigidus > > fred . Fortition also occurs in Catalan for in consonant clusters with a lateral consonant (Lat. populus > poble or .
Word-medially, is subject to fortition in numerous Romance languages, ranging from or in many speech types on Italian soil to in some varieties of Spanish.
Consonant gradation
The phenomenon of consonant gradation in Finnic languages is also a form of lenition.
Fortition
Fortition is the opposite of lenition: a consonant mutation in which a consonant changes from one considered weak to one considered strong. Fortition is less frequent than lenition in the languages of the world, but word-initial and word-final fortition is fairly frequent.
See also
Citations
General references
|
|
