Lenition is a kind of consonant mutation that appears in many languages. Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of the historical change of languages. Consonant mutation is the phenomenon in which a consonant in a word is changed according to its morphological and/or syntactic environment. ... Assimilation is a regular and frequent sound change process by which a phoneme changes to match an adjacent phoneme in a word. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time. ...

Lenition means 'softening' or 'weakening' (from Latin lenis, the root of 'lenient'), and it refers to the change of a consonant considered 'strong' into one considered 'weak' (fortis → lenis). Common examples include voicing or sonorization, as in [f] → [v]; affrication or spirantization (turning into an affricate or a fricative), as in [t] → [ts] or [s]; debuccalization (loss of place), as in [s] → [h]; degemination, as in [k:] → [k]; deglottalization, such as [k’] → [k], etc. Ultimately, consonants may be lost completely. Lenition, then, can be seen as a movement on the sonority scale from less sonorous to more sonorous. For other uses, see Latin (disambiguation). ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... Spirantization is a lenition process. ... An affricate is a consonant that begins like a stop (most often an alveovelar, such as [t] or [d]) and that doesnt have a release of its own, but opens directly into a fricative (or, in one language, into a trill). ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... Places of articulation (passive & active): 1. ...

Common types of 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 as opening,

These pathways may become mixed. For example, [kʰ] may spirantize to [x], then sororize to [ɣ]. However, whereas sounds change easily in these directions, change in the opposite direction generally requires a specific triggering environment.

Some examples

Diachronic lenition is found, for example, in the change from Latin into Spanish, where Intervocalic voiceless stops [p t k] changed into their voiced counterparts [β̞ ð̞ ɰ]: vita → vida, caput → cabo, caecus → ciego. A similar development occurred in the Celtic languages where non-geminate intervocalic voiced consonants were converted into fricatives through lenition, and voiceless stops became voiced (in Welsh, Cornish and Breton). An example of historical lenition in the Germanic languages is evidenced by English-Latin cognates such as pater, tenuis vs. father, thin. The Latin words preserved the original stops, which became fricatives in old Germanic. Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time, by means of examining languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as vocabulary, word formation, and syntax, as well as the surviving records of ancient languages. ... For other uses, see Latin (disambiguation). ... The Celtic languages are the languages descended from Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. ... Welsh redirects here, and this article describes the Welsh language. ... For the Cornish-English dialect, see West Country dialects. ... Breton (Brezhoneg) is a Celtic language spoken by some of the inhabitants of Brittany (Breizh) in France. ... Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies The Germanic languages form one of the branches of the Indo-European (IE) language family, spoken by the Germanic peoples who settled in northern Europe along the borders of the Roman Empire. ...

Sardinian offers a nice example of synchronic lenition where the rule of intervocalic lenition is so strong it even extends across word boundaries. Since it is a fully active synchronic rule, lenition is not normally indicated in the normal orthography. The term Sardinian can refer to either: Sardinia the Sardinian language This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

In the Celtic languages

In Celtic, the phenomenon of intervocalic lenition extended across word boundaries. This explains the rise of grammaticalised initial consonant mutation in modern Celtic languages through the loss of endings. A Scottish Gaelic example would be the lack of lenition in am fear /əm fɛr/ ('the man') and lenition in a’ bhean /ə vɛn/ ('the woman'). The following examples show the development of a phrase consisting of a definite article plus a masculine noun (taking the ending -os) compared with a feminine noun taking the ending -a. The historic development of lenition in these two cases can be reconstructed as follows: Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) is a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages. ...

Old Celtic *(s)indos wiros → Old Irish ind fer → in fer → an fear → am fear

Old Celtic *(s)inda bena → Old Irish ind ḃen → in ḃen → an bhean → a' bhean

Lenition in Scots Gaelic affects almost all consonants (except /ɫ̪/ which has lost its lenited counterpart). The normal orthography shows this by inserting an h (except with l n r):

Orthography

In the modern Celtic languages of the British Isles, lenition of the 'opening' type is usually denoted by adding an h to the lenited letter. In Welsh, for example, c, p and t change into ch, ph, th as a result of the so-called 'aspirate mutation' (carreg 'stone' → ei charreg 'her stone'). In late Gaelic calligraphy and in traditional Irish typography, opening lenition (simply called 'lenition' in Irish grammar) was indicated by a dot above the affected consonant. However, since few typesetters had the requisite slug, their convention has been to suffix the letter h to the consonant, to signify that it is lenited. For example, a mháthair (as above) is a Latin alphabet rendering of a ṁáṫair. This article describes the archipelago in north-Western Europe. ... The word Corcaigh in the Gaelic-script font of same name. ... When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the middle dot ·, or to the glyphs combining dot above ̇ and combining dot below ̣ which may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in use in Eastern European languages and Vietnamese. ... Typesetting involves the presentation of textual material in an aesthetic form on paper or some other media. ... A slug is a piece of spacing material used in typesetting to space paragraphs. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...

Sonorization-type lenition is represented by a simple letter switch in the Brythonic languages, for instance carreg 'stone' → y garreg 'the stone' in Welsh. In Irish orthography, it is shown by writing the 'weak' consonant alongside the (silent) 'strong' one: peann 'pen' → bpeann, ceann 'head' → gceann (sonorization is traditionally called 'eclipsis' in Irish grammar). The Brythonic languages (or Brittonic languages) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family. ... Irish orthography has a reputation as being very difficult to learn and bearing only a tenuous relationship to the pronunciation. ...

For more details, see Welsh morphology and Irish initial mutations. The morphology of the Welsh language shows many characteristics perhaps unfamiliar to speakers of English or continental European languages like French or German, but has much in common with the other modern Insular Celtic languages, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, and Breton. ... Irish, like all modern Celtic languages, is characterized by its initial consonant mutations. ...

Consonant gradation

Main article: Consonant gradation

The phenomenon of consonant gradation in Samic and Baltic-Finnic languages is also a form of lenition. Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various grades. It is found in some Finno-Lappic languages such as Finnish, Estonian and Sámi; moreover, the Votic language is known for its extensive set of gradation patterns. ... Sami is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken in parts of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. ... Baltic-Finnic languages, also known as Finnic languages, are a subgroup of the Finno-Ugric languages, and are spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 7 million people. ...

An example with geminate consonants comes from Finnish, where geminates become simple consonants while retaining voicing or voicelessness (e.g. katto → katon, dubbaan → dubata). It is also possible for entire consonant clusters to undergo lenition, as in Votic, where voiceless clusters become voiced, e.g. itke- → idgön. In phonetics, gemination is when a spoken consonant is doubled, so that it is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a single consonant. ... Votic or Votian is the language spoken by the Votes of Ingria. ...

If a language has nothing but voiceless stops, other sounds are encountered, as in Finnish, where fricatives are represented by chronemes, approximants, taps or even trills. For example, Finnish used to have a complete set of spirantization reflexes for /p t k/, though these have been lost in favour of similar-sounding phonemes. In Pohjanmaa Finnish, /ð/ was changed into /r/, thus the dialect has a synchronic lenition of an alveolar stop into an alveolar trill /t/ → /r/. Furthermore, the same phoneme /t/ undergoes assibilation te → si, e.g. root vete- → vesi and vere-. Here, vete- is the stem, vesi is its nominative, and vere- is the same stem under consonant gradation. In spoken language, a chroneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (such as the tongue) is thrown against another. ... In music, a trill is a type of ornament; see trill (music) In phonetics, a trill is a type of consonant; see trill consonant In the fictional Star Trek universe, the Trill are two symbiotic races of aliens; see Trill (Star Trek). ... Assibilation is the introduction of sibilance to a sound, to produce a sibilant consonant. ...

Fortition

Main article: Fortition

A consonant mutation in which a sound is changed from one considered 'weak' to one considered 'strong', the opposite of lenition, is called fortition. Fortition is a much rarer sound change than lenition, and is not found in many languages. Fortition is a consonantal mutation in which a sound is changed from one considered weak to one considered strong. ...

See also

• Apophony
• Consonant mutation
• Grimm's Law
• Historical linguistics
• Intervocalic alveolar flapping
• Spirantization