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Consonant lenition and phonological recategorization

Consonant lenition and phonological recategorization Abstract We examine the weakening of intervocalic voiceless stops in Spanish in order to gain insight on historical processes of intervocalic lenition. In our corpus, about a third of all tokens of intervocalic /ptk/ are fully or partially voiced in spontaneous speech. However, even when fully voiced, /ptk/ tend to show greater constriction than /bdg/, with the velars being less different than labials and coronals. Word-initial and word-internal intervocalic segments are equally affected. Based on our findings from acoustic measurements of correlates of lenition, we propose that common reductive sound changes, such as intervocalic consonant lenition, start as across-the-board conventionalized phonetic processes equally affecting all targets in the appropriate phonetic context. The common restriction of the sound change to word-internal contexts may be a consequence of phonological recategorization at a later stage in the sound change. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Laboratory Phonology de Gruyter

Consonant lenition and phonological recategorization

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References (68)

Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by the
ISSN
1868-6346
eISSN
1868-6354
DOI
10.1515/labphon.2011.011
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract We examine the weakening of intervocalic voiceless stops in Spanish in order to gain insight on historical processes of intervocalic lenition. In our corpus, about a third of all tokens of intervocalic /ptk/ are fully or partially voiced in spontaneous speech. However, even when fully voiced, /ptk/ tend to show greater constriction than /bdg/, with the velars being less different than labials and coronals. Word-initial and word-internal intervocalic segments are equally affected. Based on our findings from acoustic measurements of correlates of lenition, we propose that common reductive sound changes, such as intervocalic consonant lenition, start as across-the-board conventionalized phonetic processes equally affecting all targets in the appropriate phonetic context. The common restriction of the sound change to word-internal contexts may be a consequence of phonological recategorization at a later stage in the sound change.

Journal

Laboratory Phonologyde Gruyter

Published: Oct 1, 2011

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