Magyar Fonetikai Füzetek 24. - Tamás Szende: Phonological Representation and Lenition Processes (1992)

3. Lenition Processes - 3.2. Distortion processes in Hungarian casual speech

tion. In this example, the construction has two members. One, the predica­tive ilyesmi 'like this' is the host constituent. The other, the attributive valami 'something' modifies the predicate's reference in a non-specific di­rection and is attached to the host as a quasi-clitic. Consequently, it is almost inevitably more reduced than the main constituent. The foregoing ex­amples are evidently based on the presupposition that the phonological rules concerned are phonologized reflexes of originally articulatory processes in Gilyak, English, and Hungarian alike. This is beacuse, very similarly to the Aristotelian epistemological principle, Nihil est in história, quod prius non fuerit in praxi articulationis. This principle is taken to be justified on the basis of theorems deduced from concrete data of individual languages, primarily by Dressier (1972: Allegroregeln rechtfertigen Lentoregeln) and Fónagy (1966, 1975, 1977). The strength of syntactic cohesion as one prerequisite of the lenition of the subordinate constituent is connected with the hierarchy of semantic roles in the sequence. Constituents of low semantic value are more prone to undergoing lenition and conversely, stronger (more specifically referring) semantic constituents are more resistent. (Some details of this issue will be discussed in 4.8 with respect to discourse modifiers.) Finally, within certain limits, the occurrence of lenition has phonetic — promoting or hindering — conditions as well, (i) One of these is phono­­tactic position: medial (open) syllables are the most likely lenition sites of a word. On the other hand, (ii) certain £ components of a PR matrix are more resistent to lenition than others are. Vowel lenition processes rarely result in a backness shift. (This is physiologically motivated: such shifts would involve moving the whole tongue body whereas tongue height shifts that are more frequent cases of lenition do not. The relative stability of back­ness is reinforced by a sequence organizational regularity, too. That regu­larity is vowel harmony which, as Natural Phonology would claim, is itself a historical outcome of the same general principles that motivate lenition in synchronic actualization.) Conversely, the labiality component of vowels is very unstable. For consonants, the gesture of closure is weak in Hungarian. There is also an almost unprecedented case of a component that never under­goes lenition: nasality. Regardless of its position in phonotactic or hier­archical terms, or indeed of other distortions (reduction or even deletion)

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