Re: Word-initial sound changes

At 2:36 pm -0700 27/1/00, dirk elzinga wrote:
[....]
>Reasonable, yes, but not as lenition. Lenition has a phonetic/
>phonological trigger; what Celtic has is mutation, which is
>triggered by the morphology and has very little to do with
>phonetics/phonology at this point in their histories.
Quite right.  Different mutations can (and do) occur in the _same_ phonetic
environment, e.g. the word 'pen' ("head") becomes:
 ei ben  /i'bEn/ (his head)
 ei phen /i'fEn/ (her head)

(Yep 'ei' is /i/ - it's one of the very few pieces of false etymological
spellings in Welsh; someone in the past saw a connexion with Latin 'eius'!
The spelling pronunciation /@j/ also occurs :)

The first mutation, known as the soft mutation, originated from lenition of
/p/, but the second, known as the spirant mutation, came by way of [sp] -->
[hp] --> [f].

>Not
>knowing how consonant alternations play out in Eric's language,
>I can't say if it is lenition or not.
Quite - the Welsh above shows there's more than one possibility.  And
there's always: fy mhed /v@m'hED/ "my head"  :)

>Perhaps it is just splitting hairs, but I have always preferred
>to use the term 'lenition' to refer to consonant alternations
>which are  triggered by phonetics/phonology, and reserve the
>term 'mutation' for consonant alternations which mark
>morphological categories. It's a useful distinction to make.
I agree with Dirk on this.

Strictly lenition (i.e. "weakening") is a phonological term denoting a
weakening in the pronunciation of certain consonants; typically it involves
change
- (a) from plosive to fricative
- (b) from fricative to approximant
- (c) from voiceless to voiced
- (d) from something to nothing (zero consonant)
(the above changed are ORed [inclusive OR] together  :)

The soft mutation in the Gaelic langs. (which is only (a)) is still often
called 'lenition' in many text books.  The soft mutation of the Welsh and
the other Brittonic langs (which is (a) OR (c) OR (d)) is generally called
the 'soft mutation' .

'Fortition' ("strengthening") may also occur, which is, basically the
opposite of lenition.  A well-known example are word final plosives in
German and Russian where voiced obstruents become voiceless.  It also gave
rise to the 4th or 'hard' mutation of Cornish.

Ray.



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