lenition
Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word lenition. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word lenition, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say lenition in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word lenition you have here. The definition of the word lenition will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition oflenition, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
See also: lénition
English
Etymology
Analyzable as lenis + -ition, or as if from Latin lēnīt(us) + -ion, or Latin lēnītiō (“softening”) from lēniō (“soften”) + -tiō (action noun suffix) (attested since at least the 1500s, the same timeframe lenition is first attested in English with the sense "assuaging"). Modelled on German Lenierung.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /lɪˈnɪʃən/, /liːˈnɪʃən/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ləˈnɪʃən/, /liˈnɪʃən/
Noun
| Examples |
|---|
lenition (countable and uncountable, plural lenitions)
- (phonetics, phonology) A weakening of articulation causing a consonant to become lenis (soft).
- Antonym: fortition
- Coordinate term: assimilation
- 2001, Robert Stockwell, Donka Minkova, English Words: History and Structure, page 104:
- One of these processes, the process of T-Lenition, is extremely common, even though it takes place only when the input consonant is adjacent to a small number of affixes. In this change, a stopped consonant, [p t k b d g], becomes a fricative, [s, z, š, ž]. This process is called lenition, or weakening.
- 2001, Lisa M. Lavoie, Consonant Strength: Phonological Patterns and Phonetic Manifestations, page 7:
- Environments are an essential part of any discussion of lenition. Textbooks often describe lenition as occurring in the weak intervocalic or word-final environments. The canonical examples of lenition given earlier in (1) through (3) all occur either between vowels or between sonorants.
- 2008, Krzysztof Jaskula, Celtic, Joaquim Brandão de Carvalho, Tobias Scheer, Philippe Ségéral (editors), Lenition and Fortition, Studies in Generative Grammar: 99, page 347,
- As for Goidelic languages, the situation is clearer because Lenition III in this subfamily consisted in losing the same property as the first two lenitions, namely stopness.
- 2011, Naomi Gurevich, 66: Lenition, Marc van Oostendorp, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth V. Hume, Keren Rice (editors), The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, Volume III: Phonological Processes, page 1573,
- Five general patterns of lenitions – all based to some extent on empirical data – are identified.
Derived terms
Translations
weakening of consonant articulation
|
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 “lenition”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 “lenition”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
