|
|
 E-mail this message to a friend
|
|
Title:
|
Phonological Patterns and Phonetic Manifestations of Consonant Weakening
|
|
Author:
|
Lisa Lavoie
|
|
Degree Awarded:
|
Cornell University
, Department of Linguistics
|
|
Degree Date:
|
2000
|
|
Linguistic Subfield(s):
|
Phonology
|
|
Subject Language(s):
|
English
Spanish
|
|
Director(s):
|
Abigail Cohn
Carol Rosen
Draga Zec
|
|
|
Abstract:
|
|
|
Consonant weakening, or lenition, is comprehensively examined in this dissertation which consists of acoustic and articulatory phonetic studies of consonant strength, as well as a cross-linguistic survey of phonological patterns of lenition and fortition. A goal of this study is to locate phonetic parallels to the phonological patterns. I examine the strength of consonants of American English and Mexican Spanish in the two cross-cutting environments of position in word and position with respect to stress to determine the relative contribution of each positional factor. In the acoustic study, I analyze durations, intensity and spectral properties in closely matched disyllabic stress pairs. In the articulatory study, I measure degree of linguopalatal contact using electropalatography (EPG) in real and nonsense words. I find clear evidence for strong and weak positions, as well as the phonetic patterns that characterize consonant strength. Somewhat surprisingly, I find that some phonetic characteristics pattern simply as general indicators of manner of articulation, while others pattern clearly by position. The positional factors are found not to augment each others effects, except in English flapping. Despite robust phonetic effects in the pre-stress position, stress is not a factor that conditions historical change whereas duration is.
In addition, I test numerous hypotheses about consonant strength and find evidence for aspects of several prevalent phonological views of lenition. The acoustic and articulatory studies reveal both similarities to phonological weakening and differences. An elaborated sonority hierarchy best describes phonological weakening while a scaled down hierarchy best describes phonetic weakening. While gestural duration and magnitude are not found to decrease in tandem for phonetic weakening as Articulatory Phonology predicts, Articulatory Phonology accounts very nicely for the variation in weakening outcomes. Phonologically, voicing and fricativization are common steps in lenition, but the phonetic studies find little evidence of either. I attribute the frequency of voicing lenition to the documented tendency for shorter segments to be perceived as voiced and I attribute the frequency of lenition described as fricativization to reinterpretation of an incomplete seal as a fricative. I argue, based on the phonetics and the phonology, that the prototypical weakening is approximantization.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Page Updated: 26-Nov-2009
Please report any bad links or misclassified data
LINGUIST Homepage | Read
LINGUIST | Contact us
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed
on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.
|
|
