Lenition and Contrast

Gurevich, Naomi

doi:10.4324/9780203505052

Cited by 3 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Now the question arises as to why lenited and non-lenited allophones may survive in such a contextually determined, albeit variable and apparently unstable, situation. As found by Gurevich’s language survey this finding is consistent with lenition processes being overwhelmingly meaning-maintaining (they result in free variation or allophonic distribution but not in phonological neutralization), as it occurs precisely in Spanish or Catalan where [β, ð, ɣ] cannot be confused with other existing sounds (Gurevich, 2004). This appears to be in line with listeners being largely insensitive to the phonetic difference between voiced stop and approximant realizations of /b, d, g/, and definitely less sensitive to this manner distinction than to the contrast between voiced and voiceless stops (Kaplan, 2010).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…Indeed, the lenition scale has been reported to be /g/ > /d/ > /b/ in Florentine Italian and Balearic Catalan (Villafaña Dalcher, 2006; Wheeler, 2005, p. 320–324) and /d, g/ > /b/ in Rome Italian (Hualde & Nadeu, 2011b). However, this place of articulation hierarchy does not hold necessarily when the frequency of occurrence of stop and approximant/fricative variants of /b, d, g/ in the world’s languages is taken into consideration (Gurevich, 2004, 2011; Kaplan, 2010), and also according to other experimental studies besides those just cited (/d/ > /b, g/ in Argentine Spanish; Colantoni & Marinescu, 2010). Using an acoustic energy measure (see section 2), the present study will explore the extent to which differences in lenition degree among /b/, /d/ and /g/ conform to the place of articulation hierarchies reported for Spanish, Catalan and Italian dialectes elsewhere.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

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The Effect of Contextual Consonants on Voiced Stop Lenition: Evidence from Catalan

Recasens

2015

Lang Speech

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This study uses acoustic energy measures for /b, d, g/ after /f, s, ∫, l, r/ in Catalan in order to test whether postconsonantal voiced stop lenition is ruled by minimization of articulatory effort, acoustico-perceptual continuity of an ongoing prosodic constituent or some other principle of articulatory organization. Data for eight speakers reveal that lenition is more prone to operate on /g/ than on /b, d/, after a sonorant than after a fricative, and when the two cluster consonants are heterorganic than when they are (quasi)-homorganic. Moreover, a positive correlation was found to hold between the degrees of stop lenition and stop voicing. The /fC/ sequences had an exceptional behaviour since, in comparison to other consonants appearing in CI position, /f/ was at the same time less intense and triggered more stop-like realizations of /b, d, g/. These results indicate that, while regularly treated as a phonological process, postconsonantal voiced stop lenition in Catalan is subject to much contextual variability, and should be dealt with by a production-based model which takes into consideration several articulatory and aerodynamic factors such as constriction degree and intraoral pressure level for C1 and C2, as well as homorganicity degree between the two consecutive consonants.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

The Effect of Contextual Consonants on Voiced Stop Lenition: Evidence from Catalan

Recasens

2015

Lang Speech

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“…The way voicing and spirantization occurred diachronically can also be synchronically observed in contemporary Romance varieties, as illustrated for Sisco Corsican (Cravens 2000;Gurevich 2004) in (2) and for Gran Canarian Spanish (Oftedal 1985;Broś 2016(providing new experimental data confirming Oftedal 1985) in (3).…”

Section: Diachronic and Synchronic Romancementioning

confidence: 73%

“…In this paper, we will address the observation that lenition processes involving voicing of intervocalic voiceless plosives and spirantization of intervocalic voiced plosives typically apply in a counter-feeding interaction (Gurevich 2004), that is the voiceless plosives surface as voiced ones, but do not partake in the modification the underlying voiced plosives are subject to: they are not further modified so as to be realized as voiced fricatives.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contributions of Romance Languages to Current Linguistic Theory

Arteaga¹

2019

Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory

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Typologically, the interaction between voicing and spirantization processes applies predominantly in a counter-feeding fashion, and, more rarely in a feeding one. After providing some relevant data from contemporary Romance varieties that illustrate this state of affairs, this paper first discusses why this is problematic for previous theoretical analyses, both from a rule-based and from a constraint-based perspective of phonology. A novel way of evaluating constraints will be proposed which locally evaluates only output candidates that have undergone one single change to satisfy the relevant markedness constraint at hand. On the one hand, this allows to describe both types of interaction (feeding and counter-feeding) which thus far was quite problematic for OT. On the other hand, we will illustrate that, in perception, this makes a feeding interaction computationally more complicated than a counter-feeding one, which is, we claim, the reason for the typological unmarkedness of the counter-feeding interaction between voicing and spirantization.

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“…syllable codas, foot/word-internal intervocalic C positions and foot/word-final C positions) are weak and therefore potential targets for lenition. Some examples of lenition processes are given in Table 7, while a comprehensive survey can be found in Gurevich (2004).…”

Section: Preference For Left-edge Domain Markersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenging cross-linguistic typology: Right-edge consonantal prominence in Kaqchikel

et al. 2018

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It is known that consonants can act as boundary markers when they are located at the left edge of a prosodic domain, helping listeners to parse incoming speech. To achieve maximum efficiency in marking out boundaries, those markers should be acoustically salient. In Element Theory, domain markers are represented by the elements |H| and |ʔ|. Being inherently voiceless, these elements stand apart from the other elements, which are spontaneously voiced. Most languages show a preference for incorporating |H| or |ʔ| into segmental structures which stand at the left edge of domains. This paper challenges the universality of this view by analysing data from Kaqchikel, a K’iche’an language with a bias for marking the right edge of domains rather than the left. The marker in question is intense/prolonged noise which, in Element Theory is represented by |H|. The |H| element is present in fortis fricatives and aspirates, and in Kaqchikel it regularly appears in segments at the right edge of prosodic domains where it serves as a domain boundary marker. Boundary marking in Kaqchikel is analysed here using a Precedence-free Phonology approach to melodic structure (Nasukawa 2016) in which the linear ordering of segments is determined by the hierarchical organization of melodic units (elements) within a unified melodic–prosodic structure.

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Lenition and Contrast

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

The Effect of Contextual Consonants on Voiced Stop Lenition: Evidence from Catalan

The Effect of Contextual Consonants on Voiced Stop Lenition: Evidence from Catalan

Contributions of Romance Languages to Current Linguistic Theory

Challenging cross-linguistic typology: Right-edge consonantal prominence in Kaqchikel

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