Abstract
It has been observed that lexical frequency affects various areas of speech production. In this paper, we attempt to analyze the effect of lexical frequency on the application of phonological processes. Specifically, as to the relationship between lexical frequency and lenition, we explain that, if a word is easily accessed since it is predictable and frequent, the leniting and automating processes will be processed more easily. However, if a word is less frequent and predictable, the leniting processes could be suppressed because more complete articulation will be required for the word. In addition, we pursued the way to encode the effect of lexical frequency in Optimality Theory. By analyzing the different application mode of vowel reduction in high-frequency and low-frequency words, we provide an analysis of the effect of lexical frequency on phonological processes with the assumption of different constraint rankings.
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