Lenition - Sound Changes Associated With Lenition

Sound Changes Associated With Lenition

Two common lenition pathways are the "opening" type, where the articulation becomes more open with each step,

and the "sonorization" type, which involves voicing as well,

Note: Some of the sounds generated by lenition are often subsequently "normalized" into related but cross-linguistically more common sounds. An example would be the changes → → and → → . Such normalizations correspond to diagonal movements down and to the right in the above table. In other cases sounds are lenited and normalized at the same time; examples would be direct changes → or → .

In some cases, a lenition change may "skip" one of the columns in the above tables. This is particularly common in the case of the direct change voiceless stop → fricative, which is more common than a series of changes voiceless stop → affricate → fricative.

The above pathways may also become mixed. For example, may spirantize to, then sonorize to .

Lenition can be seen in Canadian and American English, where and soften to a tap after a stressed vowel. For example, both rate and raid plus the suffix -er are pronounced, whereas in most British English dialects there is no such lenition. (See Intervocalic alveolar flapping.) The Italian of Central Italy has a number of lenitions, the most widespread of which is the deaffrication of /t͡ʃ/ to between vowels: post-pausal cena 'dinner' but post-vocalic la cena 'the dinner'; the name Luciano, although structurally /luˈt͡ʃaːno/, is normally pronounced .