Examples
The extremely common approximant sound is sometimes subject to fortition; since it is a semivowel, almost any change to the sound other than simple deletion would constitute fortition. It has changed into the voiced fricative in a number of indigenous languages of the Arctic, such as the Eskimo–Aleut languages and Ket, and also in some varieties of Spanish. Via a voiceless palatal approximant, it has turned in some Germanic languages into, the voiceless equivalent of and also cross-linguistically rare though less so than . Another change turned to an affricate during the development of the Romance languages.
Fortition of the cross-linguistically rare interdental fricatives and to the almost universal corresponding stops and is relatively common. This has occurred in most continental Germanic languages and several English dialects, several Uralic languages, and a few Semitic languages, among others. This has the result of reducing the markedness of the sounds and .
Fortition also frequently occurs with voiceless versions of the common lateral approximant, which are usually source from combinations of with a voiceless obstruent. The product is a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative .
In the Cushitic language Iraqw, *d has lenited to /r/ between vowels, but *r has undergone fortition to /d/ word initially.
In addition to language-internal development, fortition can also occur when a language acquires loanwords. Goidelic languages frequently display fortition in loanwords as most initial fricatives (except for and ) are disallowed in the citation form of Goidelic words. Thus initial fricatives of loanwords are strengthened to the corresponding unlenited variant or the nearest equivalent if the fricative is not part of the phoneme inventory.
Examples from Scottish Gaelic:
| /v/ | → /p/ | Scots vervain → bearbhain /pɛɾavɛɲ/ |
| /hw/ | → /kʰ/ | Scots wheel → cuidheall /kʰujəl̪ˠ/ |
| /w/ | → /p/ | Scots wall → balla /pal̪ˠə/ |
| /f/ | → /p/ | Latin fundus → bonn /pɔun̪ˠ/ (foundation) |
| /θ/ | → /t̪ʰ/ | Norse þrǣll → tràill /t̪ʰɾaːʎ/ (slave) |
| /h/ | → /t̪ʰ/ | Scots Hogshead → tocasaid /t̪ʰɔʰkəs̪ətʲ/ |
| /j/ | → /kʲ/ | Scots yawl → geòla /kʲɔːl̪ˠə/ |
Read more about this topic: Fortition
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