What and where? Péter Szigetvári - SEAS

What and where? 107
In fact, in a theory applying privative phonological features – [voiced] among
them –, devoicing of an obstruent can never be analysed as assimilation, since
it involves the loss of the feature [voiced], not the spreading of the nonexistent
feature [voiceless]. In return, such a theory gives us a very straightforward,
though inherently theory-internal definition of lenition: it is the loss, i.e., delinking,
of a feature. The interpretation of this definition depends on the framework
one adopts not only because it cannot be applied to nonprivative models, 19 but
also because the set of primes is not identical in different privative theories of
melodic representation. It is widely accepted (but see Vaux and Samuels (2005)
for an opposing view) that the representation of nonspontaneous voicing in obstruents,
or of aspiration, is some manifestation of a feature [voiced] and [aspirated],
respectively. 20 Hence devoicing and deaspiration are both instances of
lenition. Similarly, if place of articulation in consonants is modelled as the presence
of features like [labial], [coronal] or [velar], while the absence of a place
feature is interpreted as glottalness, debuccalization, the loss of these features, is
also lenition.
A possible theory-specific definition of lenition and assimilation is formulated
in (9).
(9) A theory-specific definition of lenition and assimilation
a. Lenition is the delinking of a privative feature.
b. Assimilation is the spreading of a privative feature.
Under these conditions, an instance of regressive devoicing, for example, [bt]
> [pt], could be represented as in (10), using the Trubetzkoyan convention of P
and T as archiphonemes.
(10) Regressive devoicing in a privative framework
C1 C2 C1 C2
>
P T P T
✂
[voiced] [voiced]
19
It must be admitted that one might argue for [+F] turning into [−F] to be lenition in such
a framework: the practice of categorically distinguishing positive and negative feature
values is followed by, e.g., Clements (1990).
20
For example, Lyman’s law in Japanese (Itô and Mester 1995 : 819ff) and Grassmann’s law
in Greek (Collinge 1985 : 47ff) argue for these two features – as opposed to one encoding
voicelessness or absence of aspiration. Lyman’s law inhibits the occurrence of two voiced
obstruents within a morpheme, Grassmann’s has a similar effect for aspirated consonants.
The reason why no similar constraint limits the occurrence of voiceless unaspirated consonants
must be that such an alleged rule would have no feature to refer to.