routes to lenition an acoustic study弱辅音的声学研究路线.pdfVIP

Routes to Lenition: An Acoustic Study Eftychia Eftychiou* Phonetics Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom Abstract Background: Vowel lenition and its link with coarticulation have been the subject of extensive debate in the literature. The aims of the present paper are to demonstrate how vowel lenition and coarticulation are linked in Cypriot Greek (henceforth CG), to determine the nature of vowel lenition, and to illustrate how vowel lenition and coarticulation result from aerodynamic phenomena. Methodology/Principal Findings: Eight speakers were recorded producing utterances ending in either /i/ or /u/. Acoustic measures such as V1F2 and stop duration were employed to determine whether lenition of the vowels results in coarticulation with the preceding consonant. Results show that there is extensive stop-vowel coarticulation in CG and that stop production is as variable as vowel production, with full vowels never co-occurring with canonical consonants, indicating the existence of two routes to lenition in CG. Conclusions/Significance: These findings suggest that lenition in the final syllable is a consequence of the supralaryngeal articulation coupled with a marginal glottal setting. Citation: Eftychiou E (2010) Routes to Lenition: An Acoustic Study. PLoS ONE 5(3): e9828. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009828 Editor: Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells, University of Barcelona, Spain Received June 24, 2009; Accepted January 28, 2010; Published March 23, 2010 Copyright: 2010 Eftychia Eftychiou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: