17.105, Review: Phonology/Phonetics: Gurevich (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-17-105. Fri Jan 13 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.105, Review: Phonology/Phonetics: Gurevich (2004)

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1)
Date: 11-Jan-2006
From: Chiara Frigeni < cfrigeni at chass.utoronto.ca >
Subject: Lenition and Contrast 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:24:20
From: Chiara Frigeni < cfrigeni at chass.utoronto.ca >
Subject: Lenition and Contrast 
 

AUTHOR: Gurevich, Naomi
TITLE: Lenition and Contrast
SUBTITLE: The Functional Consequences of Certain Phonetically 
Conditioned Sound Changes
SERIES: Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Routledge
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2693.html 

Chiara Frigeni, University of Toronto

In this book, Gurevich's dissertation, Gurevich explores the role of 
contrast preservation in phonetically based sound changes such as 
consonant weakening. The inspection of 230 such phonetic processes 
in 153 languages reveals the ''overwhelming tendency for these 
phenomena [92%] to avoid neutralization'' of contrast, thus suggesting 
that phonetically conditioned sound changes ''do not operate 
independently of functional considerations.'' (p. 3) 

While in the introductory chapter the maintenance of contrast is 
referred to in purely functionalist terms, in the final discussion that 
follows the survey this same concept is captured in more grammar-
internal terms: ''it appears that systems of contrast in languages exert 
a gradual diachronic force over phonetic processes, a force which 
plays a prominent role in shaping phonological systems.'' (p. 280) It 
appears that by the end of the cross-linguistic investigation, 
*maintenance of contrast* is rather the trace left over time by the 
constraining power of phonology over sound changes driven by extra-
grammatical sources. In this respect, Gurevich makes an important 
contribution to the long-standing debate about the ambiguous nature 
of sound changes, both exception-less and structure-dependent 
(Kiparsky 1995), a debate recently revitalized by the Evolutionary 
Phonology project (Blevins and Garrett 1998, 2004 and Blevins 2004).

The set of languages on which Gurevich bases her survey of 
phonetically driven processes roughly corresponds to Kirchner's 1998 
[2001] database, which, in turn, is partially based on Lavoie's 1996 
[2001] one. In their works, both Kirchner and Lavoie aim at a unitary 
approach at the different processes that have been categorized under 
the rubric of lenition. Kirchner seeks this unity in the phonetic source 
of the sound change. Lavoie assesses three models of weakening - 
lenition as (i) an increase in sonority, (ii) a decrease in effort, and (iii) 
a decrease in duration and magnitude of gesture - through the 
phonetic analysis of weakening phenomena in American English and 
Mexican Spanish and concludes that all three of them are needed in 
order to account for the wide range of facts recorded. Gurevich, on 
the other hand, turns her focus to the consequences of weakening 
processes for the grammar. The same database developed by Lavoie 
and Kirchner is examined through the question of whether lenition 
processes neutralize lexical contrast or not. While an answer to this 
question, either positive or negative, has often been assumed, the 
question itself has been hardly asked. In this respect, Gurevich's 
systematic investigation is most welcome and represents a solid 
reference book.

SUMMARY

In Chapter 1, ''Introduction'', Gurevich briefly reviews some work which 
points to the relevance of functional issues such as the maintenance 
of contrast in constraining phonetically driven consonant weakening. 
The functionalist approaches she directly refers to include those of 
Jacobs and Wetzels 1988, Jacobs 1994, Hualde 2000, and Silverman 
2000. Gurevich reinforces this position by anticipating the results of 
her own cross-linguistic survey, i.e. 92% of lenition processes involve 
contrast neutralization avoidance, further discussed in Chapter 2. The 
functionalist perspective supported by Gurevich's findings is here 
contrasted with the conclusions from Hyman's 1999 and Kirchner's 
1998 studies, as well as with the implications of markedness-based 
theories.

Within a Bantu perspective, Hyman 1999 warns that the role of 
contrast maintenance in constraining lenition and fortition outputs 
cannot be overestimated, as for every language that maintains 
contrast in lenition, there is another one that neutralizes it. In contrast 
with Gurevich, Kirchner and others who propose markedness-based 
theories do not explicitly ask whether lenition processes cause 
contrast neutralization or not. They assume that such processes are 
neutralizing as a consequence of theory-internal reasons (violation of 
faithfulness constraints on the one hand and reduction to the 
unmarked on the other hand). Kirchner explores the relation between 
lenition and contrast only peripherally in his examination of the 
relationship between the articulatory-grounded markedness constraint 
LAZY which induces weakening and language-specific faithfulness 
constraints (i.e. encoding underlying contrast). Markedness-based 
theories relate lenition and context-dependent contrast neutralization 
in so far as both processes are modeled to result in less marked or 
unmarked structure. 

The chapter further foregrounds the distinction between phonetic 
(context-dependent) and phonological (context-independent or 
absolute) neutralization, for this distinction is crucial to Gurevich's 
assessment of the outputs of sound changes. Her systematic survey 
reveals in fact that the phonetic neutralization attained through 
consonantal weakening does not necessarily imply phonological 
neutralization, i.e. obliteration of lexical contrast. The relevant 
typology of neutralization is outlined and discussed in Chapter 2. 
A description of the structure of the book concludes chapter 1.

Chapter 2, ''Investigation of Phonetically Conditioned Sound 
Changes'', outlines the methods, and presents and discusses the 
results of the cross-linguistic survey. This is the core chapter of the 
dissertation and deserves attentive reading.

The methodological section clarifies the use of the sources as well as 
the schema followed in the language analyses. Gurevich directly 
consults the same grammar sources used by Kirchner and Lavoie in 
their studies, implementing the information with further language 
descriptions when needed. She refers to the primary sources as 
faithfully as possible and omits all the pieces of information that 
appear to be partial or inconsistent. Each identified process is filed 
according to the following parameters: general information about the 
language and its affiliation precede the outline of the sound 
inventories (phonetic and phonemic wherever is possible) and a 
categorization of the process in descriptive terms (spirantization, 
voicing, etc.) as well as in functional terms (contrast 
neutralization/maintenance). In particular, this functional 
categorization of the process makes reference to four classes: *not 
neutralizing* - ''processes that do not result in phonological 
neutralization of any contrast''; *limited neutralization* - ''processes 
that result in the phonological neutralization of a contrast, but its effect 
is so minor that it could not significantly affect communication''; 
*incomplete neutralization*--''processes that result in phonological 
neutralization which is limited in some respect'' (limited to certain 
contexts, mainly); and *neutralization*--''processes that result in 
complete phonological neutralization.'' (pp. 19-20) This latter and most 
crucial classification is discussed in detail in the language files which 
form the bulk of the book. Each file is closed by comments on trends in 
the grammar of the language, especially phonetic neutralizations, and 
notes on differences between the proposed classification and 
Kirchner's one.

The author recognizes the challenge of categorizing a process as 
either neutralizing or not. Gurevich points out that the kind of 
information needed for assessing presence/absence of homophony is 
often missing in traditional descriptive grammars. The important 
information comprises lists of minimal pairs and information on 
functional load of oppositions, clear descriptions of phonotactics and 
contrast displacements, as well as results of instrumental studies. 
Thus, ''none of the cases classified as neutralizing in the corpus can 
be conclusively established as obliterating lexical distinctions to the 
point of hindering communication.'' (p. 20) ''However, for the sake of 
the statistical analysis in the present study I rely wholly on available 
information and equate all cases of *potential* phonological 
neutralization with *actual* neutralization.'' (p.23) [emphasis by 
Gurevich]. 

The chapter further introduces and discusses the results of the survey 
of languages. Firstly, the results are presented in overall terms 
together with their statistical significance: 212 of 230 processes are 
not neutralizing (92%) while the remaining 18 (8%) are. Neither the 
size or the nature of the sample are shown to invalidate these 
numbers. A fine-grained picture is also provided through the 
distribution of neutralizing and not-neutralizing effects by process 
type. Gurevich also considers the nature of the neutralizing processes 
versus the non-neutralizing ones. In the former case, the number of 
tokens is too small and lacks cross-linguistic significance; they are in 
fact all Slavic voicing assimilation processes. The author avoids 
overgeneralizations and points to the statistical significance of the 
neutralizing context, which is pre-consonantal. This seems to back up 
perceptually-driven models of neutralization (Steriade 1999, as 
referred to by Gurevich, but also Côté 2000 and Kochetov 2001, for 
instance). 

Non-neutralizing processes, on the other hand, include those that are 
never neutralizing, such as degemination, occlusivization, flapping and 
voicing; and those that are almost never neutralizing, such as 
spirantization. The latter is the best represented weakening process in 
the corpus and the best sample thereof, as it shows the same ratio of 
9:1 non-neutralizing to neutralizing processes as in the whole corpus. 
To the former class of never-neutralizing processes Gurevich also 
adds those processes which were once active in the grammar of a 
language and yielded absolute neutralization of two phonemes, but 
since ''the two [phonemes] never surface in the same contexts in the 
language, obliteration of meaning distinction is avoided.'' (p. 21) It is 
also worth noticing that occlusivization is traditionally categorized as a 
fortition process rather than a lenition one, but since 7 instances 
thereof were present in Kirchner's corpus, those are included in 
Gurevich's assessment and show to be never neutralizing.

Gurevich's survey further brings to light that the most frequent 
strategies to avoid contrast neutralization are *active sound shifts*, 
such as *phonemic overlap* (37%) (''when in some context a phoneme 
A shifts to B, which is also phonemic in the language, but A/B 
opposition is maintained because in the same context B is realized as 
another sound'', p. 52) and *contrast shifts* (contrast displacement) 
(29%). ''This confirms Silverman's (2000) prediction that phonetically 
conditioned changes may be accompanied by additional changes 
motivated by meaning-maintenance consideration: these sound shifts 
are the most common meaning maintenance strategies, and may very 
well be such contrast-motivated changes.'' (p. 52)

Chapter 3, ''Languages'', records all the weakening processes (230 
tokens in total) filed and analyzed language-by-language (153 
languages in total) and according to the system explained in Chapter 
2. This is the largest chapter, making up 80% circa of the book.

Chapter 4, ''Implications'', revisits the trends emerging from the 
analysis of the corpus: (i) ''Lenition processes are overwhelmingly 
meaning-maintaining'', (ii) ''Syllable context is significant'', as those few 
processes that annul phonemic contrast occur in pre-consonantal 
position, and (iii) ''existing contrasts in a language affect the progress 
and outcome of phonetically-conditioned processes. Voicing is 79% 
more common where this feature is not contrastive, and spirantization 
is 92% more common under the same circumstances. The outcome of 
the spirantization of alveolar stop depends on the shape of the 
phonemic inventory in a given language. And the more common 
distinction maintaining strategies observed in cases of phonetic 
neutralization and sound mergers involve system-wide changes.'' (p. 
279)

Gurevich further elaborates on the significance of such trends for a 
model of the phonetic-phonology interface. While sound changes are 
grounded in the physiology of language production and perception, 
their own outputs are indeed constrained by grammar primarily in 
terms of the shape of phonemic inventories (as in the case of flapping 
being ''avoided only when r is part of the phonemic inventory'', ibidem), 
and of the functional load of a given phonemic contrast. The 
relationship between phonetically-driven sound changes and grammar 
is further documented by the restructuring effect on the entire 
phonemic system following the neutralization of contrast when this 
happens, and by the systematic avoidance of neutralization through 
contrast shifts whenever is possible.

EVALUATION/DISCUSSION

Gurevich's dissertation deserves special attention on the part of those 
scholars interested in the nature of the relationship between phonetics 
(broadly understood as the interplay of articulatory, acoustic, and 
perceptual modules) and phonology (mainly intended as the abstract 
system of phonemic oppositions). It in fact makes a contribution to the 
debate opened by Blevins 2004 on the role of sound change in 
shaping phonological patterns and systems. Through the assessment 
of the outputs of weakening processes in a large corpus of languages, 
Gurevich demonstrates that the response to phonetically-based sound 
changes is systemic. Gurevich's findings thus strengthen the claim 
that sound changes, while being exceptionless - a reflex of their extra-
grammatical source - are structure-dependent - a reflex of the 
constraining power of phonology (Kiparsky 1995, 2004). 

The merit of this work lies in the rigor of the approach: (i) a rigorous 
adherence to the previous corpora constructed by Lavoie 1996 and 
Kirchner 1998 in order to allow a straightforward comparison and 
evaluation; (ii) rigorous definitions of neutralization types; (iii) rigorous 
coherence throughout the survey of the languages; (iv) rigorous 
statistical assessments; (v) rigorous caution in discussing statistically 
non-significant findings.

The major shortcoming of this work by Gurevich is the lack of a truly 
strong contextualization of her own work within the current debates in 
phonological theory, both on the side of diachronic phonology and 
that of the nature of contrast maintenance. She makes an attempt in 
the introductory chapter, but this is not successful in my opinion, 
especially because of the rather difficult, to me, notion of *functional 
considerations* she resorts to in order to justify contrast maintenance. 
As she concludes at the end of the book (see quote at the beginning 
of this review), the picture of contrast maintenance is a complex one 
and one that seems to imply some grammar-internal mechanism. In 
the latter case, for instance, it has been recently proposed that 
contrast preservation should be considered as an independent 
principle of grammar (Lubowicz 2003). I believe that the in-depth 
analysis of single language cases, clearly beyond the scope of a 
broad cross-linguistic investigation, could shed some light on the 
constraining role played by the organization of phonemic contrast on 
sound change outputs; something that has the effect of preserving 
contrast, without necessarily being an independent principle of 
grammar. As pointed out  by Lavoie (2001:167), ''[t]he role of 
categorical perception and phoneme inventories must not be 
overlooked, as they certainly influence the perception of the 
consonants and may account for some outcomes which do not follow 
directly from the phonetics. Many Australian languages, for example, 
have no phonemic fricatives, and when their stops weaken, they are 
said to weaken directly to sonorants.'' Note that this seems accurate 
also for Ibero-Romance languages, for instance, where the allophonic 
lenited voiced fricatives are better characterized as approximants from 
an acoustic point of view.

It is unfortunate that these issues are not discussed, as this discussion 
would have pinpointed the theoretical relevance of Gurevich's 
findings; on the other hand, one must acknowledge the breadth and 
solidity of Gurevich's survey and statistical evaluation, as well as the 
theoretical relevance of the bare facts she brings to light.

REFERENCES

Blevins, Juliette and Andrew Garrett. 1998. The origins of consonant-
vowel metathesis. Language 74. 508-556.

Blevins, Juliette and Andrew Garrett. 2004. ''The evolution of 
metathesis.'' In Hayes, B., Kirchner R. and D. Steriade. Phonetically 
based phonology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 117-
156.

Blevins, Juliette. 2004. Evolutionary Phonology. The emergence of 
sound patterns. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Côté, Marie-Hélène. 2000. Consonant cluster phonotactics: A 
perceptual approach. Doctoral dissertation: MIT, Cambridge, 
Massachusetts.

Hualde, José Ignacio. 2000. ''On system-driven sound change: Accent 
shift in Markina Basque.'' Lingua 110. 99-129.

Hyman, Larry. 1999. ''Contexts of Fortition and Lenition in Bantu.'' 
Abstract. Presented at the ''International Conference in Phonology'' in 
Nice, France.

Jacobs, Haike and Leo Wetzels. 1988. ''Early French lenition: A formal 
account of an integrated sound change.'' In van der Hulst, Harry and 
Norval Smith (eds.), Features, segmental structure and harmony 
processes. Part I. 105-129.

Jacobs, Haike. 1994. ''Lenition and Optimality Theory.'' Proceedings of 
LSRL XXIV, February 1994. Rutgers Optimality Archive. ROA# 127-
0496.

Kiparsky, Paul. 1995. ''The phonological basis of sound change.'' In 
Goldsmith, John A. (ed.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory. 
Blackwell. 640-670.

Kiparsky, Paul. 2004. Universals constrain change, change results 
in typological generalizations. Ms., Stanford University. Downloadable 
from: http://www.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/#recent-papers

Kirchner, Robert. 1998. An effort based approach to consonant 
lenition. Doctoral dissertation: University of California, Los Angeles. 
Published in the Routledge Outstanding Dissertation Series in 2001.

Kochetov, Alexei. 2001. Production, perception and emergent 
phonotactic patterns. A case of contrastive palatalization. Doctoral 
dissertation: University of Toronto. Published in the Routledge 
Outstanding Dissertation Series in 2002.

Lavoie, Lisa. 1996. ''Consonant strength: Results of a data base 
development project.'' Working papers of the Cornell Phonetics 
Laboratory. Volume 11. 269-316.

Lavoie, Lisa. 2001. Consonant strength. Phonological patterns and 
phonetic manifestations. Outstanding dissertations in Linguistics. New 
York and London: Garland.

Lubowicz, Anna. 2003. Contrast preservation and phonological 
mappings. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts at 
Amherst.

Silverman, Daniel. 2000. ''Alveolar stops in American English, and the 
nature of allophony.'' In Tamanji, Pius N. and Kiyomi Kusumoto (eds.) 
NELS 28. GLSA, University of Massachussetts: Amherst.

Steriade, Donca. 1999. ''Alternatives to the syllabic interpretation of 
consonantal phonotactics.'' In Fujimura, O., B. Joseph and B. Palek 
(eds.) Proceedings of the 1998 Linguistics and Phonetics Conference. 
The Karolinum Press. 205-242. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Chiara Frigeni is a fifth-year PhD student in the Department of 
Linguistics at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation focuses on 
the role of abstract representations and domains in defining the 
phonetics/phonology interface within the synchronic grammar and 
through the diachronic development of Sardinian (Romance).





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