Intervocalic voicing and spirantization are two common phonological processes in the languages of the world (Gurevich, 2011). Conversely, there are also many languages where, for example, spirants or glides become obstruents after consonants. In the phonological literature, the former processes are usually summarized as lenition/weakening, the latter as fortition/strengthening. Whereas lenition and fortition are truly phonological and triggered (in most cases) by the presence of certain adjacent segments, consonant mutation refers to the same set of operations but is triggered by certain morpho-syntactic features (Grijzenhout, 2011); a famous example being the initial consonant mutation in Irish (Ní Chiosáin, 1991).
In this course, we will investigate the typology of these processes and discuss their modeling in phonological theory.
The course is part of Modul 04-046-2013, `Phonologie: Segmentale Phonologie'.
- Trainer/in: Eva Zimmermann