|
|
|
|
Lenition
|
| |
|
| |
Lenition is a kind of consonant mutation that appears in many languages. Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of historical change of languages.
Lenition means 'softening' or 'weakening' (from Latin lenis = weak), and it refers to the change of a consonant considered 'stronger' into one considered 'weaker' (or fortis ? lenis). Common examples include voicing or sonorization, as in ? ; affrication or spirantization (turning into an affricate or a fricative), as in ? ? ; debuccalization (loss of place), as in ? ; degemination, as in ? ; deglottalization, such as ? , etc. These may occur one after the other in the history of a language.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Lenition' Start a new discussion about 'Lenition' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
Lenition is a kind of consonant mutation that appears in many languages. Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of historical change of languages.
Lenition means 'softening' or 'weakening' (from Latin lenis = weak), and it refers to the change of a consonant considered 'stronger' into one considered 'weaker' (or fortis ? lenis). Common examples include voicing or sonorization, as in ? ; affrication or spirantization (turning into an affricate or a fricative), as in ? ? ; debuccalization (loss of place), as in ? ; degemination, as in ? ; deglottalization, such as ? , etc. These may occur one after the other in the history of a language. Eventually, consonants may be lost completely, which is the ultimate lenition. Lenition, then, can be seen as a movement on the sonority scale from less to more sonorous, or on a strength hierarchy from stronger to weaker.
Sound changes associated with lenition
Two common lenition pathways are the "opening" type, where the articulation becomes more open with each step,
| stop | ? | affrication | ? | spirantization | ? | debuccalization | ? | elision |
|---|
| ? | | ? | | ? | | ? | (zero) | | ? | | ? | | ? | | ? | (zero) | | ? | | ? | | ? | | ? | (zero) |
and the "sonorization" type, which involves voicing as well,
| stop | ? | sonorization | ? | spirantization | ? | approximation | ? | elision |
|---|
| ? | | ? | | ? | | ? | (zero) | | ? | | ? | | ? | | ? | (zero) | | ? | | ? | | ? | | ? | (zero) |
These pathways may become mixed. For example, may spirantize to , then sonorize to . However, whereas sounds change easily in these directions, change in the opposite direction (fortition) generally requires a specific triggering environment.
Diachronic lenition
Diachronic lenition is found, for example, in the change from Latin into Spanish, in which the intervocalic voiceless stops first changed into their voiced counterparts , and later into the approximants : vita ? vida, caput ? cabo, caecus ? ciego. A similar development occurred in the Celtic languages, where non-geminate intervocalic voiced consonants were converted into fricatives through lenition, and voiceless stops became voiced (in Welsh, Cornish and Breton). An example of historical lenition in the Germanic languages is evidenced by English-Latin cognates such as pater, tenuis vs. father, thin. The Latin words preserved the original stops, which became fricatives in old Germanic.
Synchronic lenition
Allophonic lenition (sandhi)
Like several Romance languages, many varieties of Sardinian offer an example of sandhi where the rule of intervocalic lenition extends across word boundaries. Since it is a fully active synchronic rule, lenition is not normally indicated in the normal orthography.
| baca 'cow' ? sa baca 'the cow' | | domu 'house' ? su domu 'the house' | | gupu 'ladle' ? su gupu 'the ladle' | |
Grammatical lenition
In the Celtic languages, the phenomenon of intervocalic lenition extended across word boundaries. This explains the rise of grammaticalised initial consonant mutations in modern Celtic languages through the loss of endings. A Scottish Gaelic example would be the lack of lenition in am fear ('the man') and lenition in a’ bhean ('the woman'). The following examples show the development of a phrase consisting of a definite article plus a masculine noun (taking the ending -os) compared with a feminine noun taking the ending -a. The historic development of lenition in these two cases can be reconstructed as follows:
- Old Celtic *(s)indos wiros ? Old Irish ind fer ? in fer ? an fear ? am fear
- Old Celtic *(s)inda bena ? Old Irish ind en ? in en ? an bhean ? a' bhean
Synchronic lenition in Scottish Gaelic affects almost all consonants (except which has lost its lenited counterpart). Changes such as to involve the loss of secondary articulation; in addition, ? involves the reduction of a trill to a tap. The spirantization of Gaelic nasal to is unusual among forms of lenition, but is triggered by the same environment as more prototypical lenition. (It may also leave a residue of nasalization in adjacent vowels. The orthography shows this by inserting an h (except after l n r):
| Spirantization | | | bog 'soft' ? glé bhog 'very soft' | | back vowel) | 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 steep' | | 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 | | ? Ø | fann 'faint' ? glé fhann 'very faint' | | | feòrachail 'inquisitive' ? glé fheòrachail 'very inquisitve' | | Reduction of place markedness | | In the modern Goidelic languages, grammatical lenition also triggers the reduction of markedness in the place of articulation of coronal sonorants (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' |
Orthography
In the modern Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland, lenition of the 'opening' type is usually denoted by adding an h to the lenited letter. In Welsh, for example, c, p and t change into ch, ph, th as a result of the so-called 'aspirate mutation' (carreg 'stone' ? ei charreg 'her stone'). An exception is Manx orthography, which tends to be more phonetic, although in some cases etymological principles are applied. In late Gaelic calligraphy and in traditional Irish typography, opening lenition (simply called 'lenition' in Irish grammar) was indicated by a dot above the affected consonant. However, since the introduction of typewriters, the convention has been to suffix the letter h to the consonant, to signify that it is lenited. For example, a mháthair (as above) is a Latin alphabet rendering of .
Sonorization-type 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' ? bpeann, ceann 'head' ? gceann (sonorization is traditionally called 'eclipsis' in Irish grammar).
For more details, see Welsh morphology and Irish initial mutations.
Consonant gradation
The phenomenon of consonant gradation in Samic and Baltic-Finnic languages is also a form of lenition.
An example with geminate consonants comes from Finnish, 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, where voiceless clusters become voiced, e.g. itke- ? idgön.
If a language has nothing but voiceless stops, other sounds are encountered, as in Finnish, where fricatives are represented by chronemes, approximants, taps or even trills. 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 Pohjanmaa Finnish, was changed into , thus the dialect has a synchronic lenition of an alveolar stop into an alveolar trill . Furthermore, the same phoneme undergoes assibilation te ? si, e.g. root vete- ? vesi and vere-. Here, vete- is the stem, vesi is its nominative, and vere- is the same stem under consonant gradation.
Fortition
A consonant mutation in which a sound is changed from one considered 'weak' to one considered 'strong', the opposite of lenition, is called fortition. Although less frequent than lenition in the languages of the world, word-initial and word-final fortition is not uncommon. Italian, for example, presents numerous regular examples of word-initial fortition both historically (Lat. Januarius with initial /j/ > gennaio, with ) and synchronically (e.g. /kasa/ 'house, home' ? [ka?sa] but /a kasa/ 'at home' ? [ak?a?sa]). Catalan is among numerous Romance languages with diachronic word-final fortition (frigidu > *[fred] > [fret] 'cold'). Word-medially, /ll/ is subject to fortition in numerous Romance languages, ranging from [dd] in many speech types on Italian soil to [d?] in some varieties of Spanish.
See also
|
| |
|
|
