In articulatory phonetics , fortition , also known as strengthening , is a consonantal change that increases the degree of stricture. It is the opposite of the more common lenition . For example, a fricative or an approximant may become a stop (i.e. [v] becomes [b] or [r] becomes [d] ). Although not as typical of sound change as lenition, fortition may occur in prominent positions, such as at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable; as an effect of reducing markedness ; or due to morphological leveling .
24-638: The extremely common approximant sound [j] is sometimes subject to fortition; since it is a semivowel , almost any change to the sound other than simple deletion would constitute fortition. It has changed into the voiced fricative [ʝ] in a number of indigenous languages of the Arctic , such as the Eskimo–Aleut languages and Ket , and also in some varieties of Spanish . In the Southern Ryukyuan language Yonaguni , it has changed word-initially into [d] . Via
48-492: A voiceless palatal approximant , it has turned in some Germanic languages into [ç] , the voiceless equivalent of [ʝ] and also cross-linguistically rare though less so than [ʝ] . Another change turned [j] to an affricate [dʒ] during the development of the Romance languages from Latin. Fortition of the cross-linguistically rare interdental fricatives [θ] and [ð] to the almost universal corresponding stops [t] and [d]
72-500: A narrower constriction in the vocal tract than their corresponding vowels. Nevertheless, semivowels may be phonemically equivalent with vowels. For example, the English word fly can be considered either as an open syllable ending in a diphthong [flaɪ̯] or as a closed syllable ending in a consonant [flaj] . It is unusual for a language to contrast a semivowel and a diphthong containing an equivalent vowel, but Romanian contrasts
96-595: A phonological parallel exists between /o̯a/ and /wa/ , the production and perception of phonetic contrasts between the two is much weaker, likely because of lower lexical load for /wa/ , which is limited largely to loanwords from French , and speakers' difficulty in maintaining contrasts between two back rounded semivowels in comparison to front ones. According to the standard definitions, semivowels (such as [j] ) contrast with fricatives (such as [ʝ] ) in that fricatives produce turbulence, but semivowels do not. In discussing Spanish , Martínez Celdrán suggests setting up
120-548: A syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the consonants y and w in yes and west , respectively. Written / j w / in IPA , y and w are near to the vowels ee and oo in seen and moon, written / iː uː / in IPA . The term glide may alternatively refer to any type of transitional sound, not necessarily a semivowel. Semivowels form a subclass of approximants . Although "semivowel" and "approximant" are sometimes treated as synonymous, most authors use
144-430: A third category of "spirant approximant", contrasting both with semivowel approximants and with fricatives. Though the spirant approximant is more constricted (having a lower F2 amplitude), longer, and unspecified for rounding ( viuda [ˈb ju ða] 'widow' vs. ayuda [aˈ ʝʷu ða] 'help'), the distributional overlap is limited. The spirant approximant can only appear in the syllable onset (including word-initially, where
168-783: A voiceless obstruent . The product is a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ] . In Welsh , words inherited from Proto-Celtic with initial [l] or [r] hardened to [ɬ] and [r̥] , respectively. Examples: Old Welsh lau /laʊ̯/ to Modern Welsh llaw /ɬaʊ̯/ ; Old Welsh ros /rɔs/ to Modern Welsh rhos /r̥ɔs/ . In the Cushitic language Iraqw , *d has lenited to /r/ between vowels, but *r has undergone fortition to /d/ word initially. In Friulian , /ʒ/ > /d/ : yoyba , jobia > dobia , doba ; gel > dal ; Lat. iuvenis > doven ; Lat. iunius > dun . Gemination of word-initial consonants occurs in Italian if
192-460: A word-final stressed vowel precedes without intervening pause, in a process known as syntactic gemination . Final stressed vowels are by nature short, and short stressed vowels precede a consonant within a (phonetic) word only if that consonant ends the syllable. An item such as comprò 's/he bought' thus triggers gemination of the following consonant, whereas compra 's/he buys/is buying' does not: comprò la pasta [komˈprɔllaˈpasta] 's/he bought
216-507: Is more closely related to the Gisu dialect of Masaaba in eastern Uganda (and to the other Luhya dialect of Tachoni) than it is to other languages spoken by the Luhya. Several consonants undergo fortition after nasal consonants: [β, w → b, j → dʒ, l, r → d] ; Mutonyi (2000) postulates that Bukusu has no phonemic voiced plosives. The language has three main variations: Of these,
240-612: Is not present in all dialects. Other dialects differ in either merging the two or enhancing the contrast by moving the former to another place of articulation ( [ʒ] ), like in Rioplatense Spanish . Bukusu language Bukusu is a dialect of the Masaba language spoken by the Bukusu tribe of the Luhya people of western Kenya . It is one of several ethnically Luhya dialects ; however, it
264-417: Is relatively common. This has occurred in most continental Germanic languages and several English dialects , several Uralic languages , and a few Semitic languages , among others. This has the result of reducing the markedness of the sounds [θ] and [ð] . Fortition also frequently occurs with voiceless versions of the common lateral approximant [l] , usually sourced from combinations of [l] with
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#1732883380816288-405: Is similar to the epenthetic stop in words like dance ( [ˈdæns ~ ˈdænts] ) in many dialects of English, which effectively is fortition of fricative [s] to affricate [ts] . Semivowel In phonetics and phonology , a semivowel , glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of
312-517: The Bukusu by a shared language and a common culture. Intermarriage between the Bukusu and these Ugandan tribes is very common and is, in fact, encouraged by the respective communities. As a result, many Bukusu have close relatives among the Gisu and Masaaba, and vice versa. During the Ugandan civil wars of the 1970s, many of the Gisu and Masaba left Uganda for Kenya, mainly to live with Bukusu relatives around
336-527: The Bungoma area. After the wars ended, a large number did not return to Uganda, having already started new lives in Kenya. Their large dispersal among the Bukusu in that area has had a discernible influence on the Bukusu language in the Bungoma region. Native speakers of the language will easily identify someone from the area based on their speech. Of particular note is the substitution of R with L , so that, for example,
360-612: The Kabras language, the term is rendered as 'eShindu'. The Bukusu east of Webuye town will usually say 'eSindu', thus adopting the prefix of the Kabras language while retaining the Bukusu root word 'Sindu' (as opposed to the Kabras root word, 'Shindu'). Because it borders the nilotic Kalenjin languages of the Pokot , Nandi and Sebei to the north, east and west, the Bukusu language spoken in Kitale area has largely retained its original form, save for
384-740: The corresponding unlenited variant or the nearest equivalent if the fricative is not part of the phoneme inventory. Examples from Scottish Gaelic : Post-nasal fortition is very common in Bantu languages . For example, Swahili l and r become d after a nasal prefix, and w becomes b ; voiceless stops become aspirated. In Shambala , l and r become d , and h and gh [ɣ] become p and g as well. In Bukusu , v [β] and w become b , y becomes j [dʒ] , and l, r become d . In other languages, voiceless fricatives f, s, hl become affricates pf, ts, tl ; see for example Xhosa . This
408-404: The diphthong /e̯a/ with /ja/ , a perceptually similar approximant-vowel sequence. The diphthong is analyzed as a single segment, and the approximant-vowel sequence is analyzed as two separate segments. In addition to phonological justifications for the distinction (such as the diphthong alternating with /e/ in singular-plural pairs), there are phonetic differences between the pair: Although
432-653: The four close cardinal vowel sounds: In addition, some authors consider the rhotic approximants [ ɹ ] , [ ɻ ] to be semivowels corresponding to R-colored vowels such as [ ɚ ] . An unrounded central semivowel, [j̈] (or [j˗] ), equivalent to [ɨ] , is uncommon, though rounded [ẅ] (or [w̟] ), equivalent to [ʉ] , is found in Swedish and Norwegian . Semivowels, by definition, contrast with vowels by being non-syllabic. In addition, they are usually shorter than vowels. In languages such as Amharic , Yoruba , and Zuni , semivowels are produced with
456-558: The language spoken around Kitale town is usually considered the purest form - this is because the other two dialects are significantly influenced by other dialects of the Luhya languages . The Bukusu tribe lives in Bungoma district , which borders Uganda to the west and Kakamega district of Kenya to the east . Across the border in Uganda live the Masaba and the Gisu , both closely related to
480-441: The pasta' but compra la pasta [ˈkompralaˈpasta] 's/he buys/is buying the pasta'. In addition to language-internal development, fortition can also occur when a language acquires loanwords. Goidelic languages frequently display fortition in loanwords as most initial fricatives (except for [s̪] , [ʃ] and [f] ) are disallowed in the citation form of Goidelic words. Thus initial fricatives of loanwords are strengthened to
504-488: The semivowel never appears). The two overlap in distribution after /l/ and /n/ : enyesar [ẽɲ ɟʝ eˈsaɾ] ('to plaster') aniego [ãˈn j eɣo] ('flood') and although there is dialectal and idiolectal variation, speakers may also exhibit other near-minimal pairs like ab ye cto ('abject') vs. ab ie rto ('opened'). One potential minimal pair (depending on dialect) is ya visto [ (ɟ)ʝa ˈβisto] ('already seen') vs. y ha visto [ ja ˈβisto] ('and he has seen'). Again, it
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#1732883380816528-469: The symbol representing the vowel: U+ 032F ◌̯ COMBINING INVERTED BREVE BELOW . When there is no room for the inverted breve under a symbol, it may be written above, using U+ 0311 ◌̑ COMBINING INVERTED BREVE . Before 1989, non-syllabicity was represented by U+ 0306 ◌̆ COMBINING BREVE , which now stands for extra-shortness . Additionally, there are dedicated symbols for four semivowels that correspond to
552-475: The term "semivowel" for a more restricted set; there is no universally agreed-upon definition, and the exact details may vary from author to author. For example, Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) do not consider the labiodental approximant [ʋ] to be a semivowel. In the International Phonetic Alphabet , the diacritic attached to non-syllabic vowel letters is an inverted breve placed below
576-425: The verb 'khuufwara' (xuufwara) - to wear [clothes] is now pronounced 'khuufwala', as it is in the Gisu and Masaaba languages. The dialect spoken east of Webuye town is influenced by the neighbouring Kabras and Tachoni dialects of the Luhya language. This is particularly noticeable in the changes in noun prefixes: in the original Bukusu language, for example, the term 'something' would be rendered as 'siSindu'. In
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