Consonant weakening in Florentine Italian: A cross-disciplinary approach to gradient and variable sound change

Dalcher, Christina Villafaña

doi:10.1017/s0954394508000021

Cited by 15 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…2 Such a prediction has been borne out by several lenition studies (Bybee, 2002;Pierrehumbert, 2001;Dalcher, 2006) and so lexical item is included in the present study as a random effect.…”

Section: Domain Position Effectsmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Foley (1977), for example, proposes a strength hierarchy of places of articulation ordered by their likelihood of undergoing lenition: Velar > bilabial > alveolar. Evidence supporting this is generally constrained to studies of the Romance languages-for example Florentine Italian (Dalcher, 2006) and Balearic Catalan (Wheeler, 2005, pp. 320-324).…”

Section: Place Of Articulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, if one uses 'bursts' to define the right edge of a true phonetic stop, how should this be compared to the right edge of allophonic variants such as taps (Connell, 1991), fricated stops (Dalcher, 2006), or simple approximants? In Gurindji, this is a pertinent challenge, as a pilot study (Ennever, 2014a) indicates that fewer than 60% of intervocalic stop phonemes' realizations are true stops, with the proportion dropping as low as 19% for /k/, depending on its position.…”

Section: Challenges Of Acoustic Speech Segmentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In previous research, measures of change of intensity (Δi) during a consonant have been employed as quantitative indexes of lenition in studies of Florentine Italian, Spanish, and American English (Bouavichith & Davidson, 2013;Colantoni & Marinescu, 2010;Dalcher, 2006;Lavoie, 2001;Lewis, 2001). Kingston (2008) and in particular employ measures of peak intensity velocity (P i ) as a measure of lenition, on the grounds that more lenis variants have less abrupt acoustic transitions, making it difficult to demarcate their edges and hence determine where to measure Δi from.…”

Section: Challenges Of Acoustic Speech Segmentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A replicable acoustic measure of lenition and the nature of variability in Gurindji stops

Ennever

Meakins

Round

2017

Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology

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An automated method is presented for the commensurable, reproducible measurement of duration and lenition of segment types ranging from fully occluded stops to highly lenited variants, in acoustic data. The method is motivated with respect to the relationship between acoustic and articulatory phonetics and, through subsequent evaluation, is argued to correspond well to articulation. It is then applied to the phonemic stops of casual speech in Gurindji (Pama-Nyungan, Australia) to investigate the nature of their articulatory targets. The degree of stop lenition is found to vary widely. Contrary to expectations, no evidence is found of a positive effect on lenition due to word-medial (relative to word-initial) position, beyond that attributable to duration; nor do non-coronals lenite more than their apical counterparts, which freely lenite along a continuum towards taps. No significant effect is found of preceding or following vocalic environment. Taken together, the observed lenition, duration, and peak intensity velocities are argued to be inconsistent with a single, fully-occluded articulatory 'stop' target which is undershot at short durations, rather targets can be understood to span a range or 'window' of values in the sense of Keating (1990), from fully-occluded stop-like targets to more approximantlike targets. It is an open question to what degree the patterns found in Gurindji are language particular, or can be related to the organization of obstruent systems in Australian languages more broadly. Precisely comparable studies of additional languages will be especially valuable in addressing these questions and others, and are possible using the method we introduce.

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“…2 Such a prediction has been borne out by several lenition studies (Bybee, 2002;Pierrehumbert, 2001;Dalcher, 2006) and so lexical item is included in the present study as a random effect.…”

Section: Domain Position Effectsmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Place Of Articulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Challenges Of Acoustic Speech Segmentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Challenges Of Acoustic Speech Segmentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A replicable acoustic measure of lenition and the nature of variability in Gurindji stops

Ennever

Meakins

Round

2017

Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology

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“…[ˈkasa] / [la ˈɰasa]) [Giannelli and Savoia, 1979;Kirchner, 2004;Dalcher, 2008]. In this article, we focus on the production of voiced stops in connected speech in American English in order to examine whether connected speech reductions are a precursor for the synchronic lenition processes described for many languages.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Segmental and Prosodic Effects on Intervocalic Voiced Stop Reduction in Connected Speech

Bouavichith

Davidson²

2013

Phonetica

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De scriptions of lenition have often assumed that connected speech reductions are the phonetic precursors of phonological lenition processes. In this article, production of intervocalic voiced stops during reading in American English is examined to determine whether connected speech reduction processes mirror the stages of lenition that have been posited in the phonological literature. The first result shows that American English speakers never lenite to fricatives or debuccalize to [h] or glottal stop, but rather produce approximants whenever reduction occurs. Second, stress plays an essential role: 51% of stops are produced as approximants when stress is on the preceding syllable (e.g. ‘yoga'), but only 7% of stops weaken when stress is on the following syllable (e.g. ‘lagoon'). Approximant productions are longer and higher in intensity than stop productions when stress precedes the target consonant, but when stress follows the target consonant, the stop cues are enhanced. These acoustic findings suggest that English speakers prioritize the realization of acoustic cues to stress, including the robust production of stop consonants, over pressures to reduce or weaken consonants in intervocalic position.

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Phonological contrasts and gradient effects in ongoing lenition in the Spanish of Gran Canaria

et al. 2021

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This study explores ongoing lenition of postvocalic /p t k b d g/ in the Spanish of Gran Canaria. Duration, intensity and harmonics-to-noise ratio of 16,454 sounds produced by 44 native speakers were measured, with the latter phonetic parameter used for the first time to investigate lenition. The results show a path of gradual sound shortening and opening from voiceless stops to open approximants, as well as systematic use of six different variants depending on the underlying representation and phonological context: two types of [p t k], two types of [b d g] and two types of [β˕ ð˕ ɣ˕]. We interpret this as continuity lenition that leads to the flattening of the intensity contour and harmonicity of the target segment with respect to the flanking sounds. We argue that a phonological analysis of this process that accounts for its non-neutralising character requires the use of a scalar [aperture] feature.

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Consonant weakening in Florentine Italian: A cross-disciplinary approach to gradient and variable sound change

Cited by 15 publications

References 29 publications

A replicable acoustic measure of lenition and the nature of variability in Gurindji stops

A replicable acoustic measure of lenition and the nature of variability in Gurindji stops

Segmental and Prosodic Effects on Intervocalic Voiced Stop Reduction in Connected Speech

Phonological contrasts and gradient effects in ongoing lenition in the Spanish of Gran Canaria

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