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Lenition, perception and neutralisation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2016

Jonah Katz
Jonah Katz*
Affiliation:
West Virginia University
*
E-mail: katzlinguist@gmail.com.
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Abstract

This paper argues that processes traditionally classified as lenition fall into at least two subsets, with distinct phonetic reflexes, formal properties and characteristic contexts. One type, referred to as loss lenition, frequently neutralises contrasts in positions where they are perceptually indistinct. The second type, referred to as continuity lenition, can target segments in perceptually robust positions, increases the intensity and/or decreases the duration of those segments, and very rarely results in positional neutralisation of contrasts. While loss lenition behaves much like other phonological processes, analysing continuity lenition is difficult or impossible in standard phonological approaches. The paper develops a phonetically based optimality-theoretic account that explains the typology of the two types of lenition. The crucial proposal is that, unlike loss lenition, continuity lenition is driven by constraints that reference multiple prosodic positions.

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Articles
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Phonology , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , May 2016 , pp. 43 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

Many thanks to Larry Hyman, John Kingston, the associate editor and two anonymous reviewers for detailed feedback on the manuscript. Thanks as well to Edward Flemming, Melinda Fricke, Sharon Inkelas, Keith Johnson, John Ohala and Donca Steriade for helpful discussion. Several other colleagues, including Michael Becker, Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero and Bruce Hayes, provided helpful feedback and questions after the initial acceptance of this manuscript; sadly, these are not incorporated here. I thank them nonetheless.

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