The WCL and Gudang forms include the common Pama-Nyungan
lenition r > y, absent in Miriam, a Papuan language, where instead m has undergone fortition to b.
Three shorter supplementary chapters follow: chapter 6 discusses what may be inferred about Hittite accent from the effects of prehistoric
lenition and fortition of consonants; chapters 7 and 8 treat aspects of accent at the clause level as reflected in the behavior of clitics and in poetic meter.
Terms like phonology, morphology, mutation, and
lenition are thrown out without definition.
Lenition is thus the process of becoming less strong or more sonorous, as [k] [right arrow] [g].
(1) Word-initial Word-medial Word-final /p/ [p.sup.h]uba 'disease' ?a[p.sup.h]a 'uncle' se[p.sup.h] 'roof /p/ p'u[k.sup.hh]i 'red honey' p'abi ~ p'abi 'gathering' fwafap 'tarantula' /b/ buba 'male' ?aba ~ ?a[beta]a 'sun' dop 'lion' The phoneme /p/ is acoustically distinguishable by either the presence of aspiration or
lenition. Word-initially it is most commonly realized as a strongly aspirated [[p.sup.h]].
He looks in turn at accent and vowels: plene versus non-plene spelling, accent and consonants:
lenition and fortition, and accent and clauses: clitics and metrics.
In other words, stress "inhibits
lenition" (Colantoni & Marinescu 2010:108).
Lenition is only present in two cases: fatiga (II: 12); fondego 'fondaco' (VI: 31).
The development of stop gradation can be viewed either as a process of fortition or a process of
lenition. In both cases it can be analysed as a phenomenon that was triggered by specific contexts, or one which involved all stops, but was blocked in certain environments.