Inertial and Non-Inertial Lenition Processes

This study aims at determining the influence of vocal tract inertia on the following lenition processes: phonetic vowel reduction, vowel deletion, spirantisation, place assimilation and consonant cluster simplification. Since speech has to be realised within the limits imposed on the speaker by the physical properties of the speech apparatus, even universally preferred sound combinations, i.e. strings of CV syllables, can constitute an articulatory difficulty at fast rates due to the inertia of the active speech organ. Under such circumstances, speakers of various languages frequently apply lenitions that are not employed in their language in natural speech and, most importantly, there are striking similarities in how certain difficulties are overcome. The major conclusion that can be drawn from the data is that lenitions affecting CVC and VCV sound sequences are inertial, whereas those affecting consonant clusters are non-inertial.