Abstract
BackgroundVowel 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 FindingsEight 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/SignificanceThese findings suggest that lenition in the final syllable is a consequence of the supralaryngeal articulation coupled with a marginal glottal setting.
Highlights
The Greek language has five vowels underlyingly: /i e ! o u/
Differences in vowel production are not limited to Greek but are common in a range of phonetically better-known languages, such as Brazilian Portuguese [7], European French [8], Japanese [9,10], and even English [11]
The classification attempted in the aforementioned section should be viewed as a tool aimed to facilitate answering the research questions the present paper is concerned with regarding the nature of vowel lenition and its link with coarticulation
Summary
The Greek language has five vowels underlyingly: /i e ! o u/. Northern and western varieties of Greek are well-known for the fact that the two close vowels tend to be elided when they occur in unstressed position in connected speech. Various terms have been employed to describe the non-modal ways in which vowels are realised in the languages of the world; reduction [4], devoicing [9,10,12,13], elision [4,11], or devocalisation [14]. This diversity in the terminology employed to describe vowel realisation is, perhaps, a reflection of the different ways in which a vowel is realised, and of the continuum of changes that it goes through, from extreme shortening, to devoicing and, to elision [4,5]. The aims of the present paper are to demonstrate how vowel lenition and coarticulation are linked in Cypriot Greek ( CG), to determine the nature of vowel lenition, and to illustrate how vowel lenition and coarticulation result from aerodynamic phenomena
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