Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Articulated with relatively low pressure of the airstream below the glottis, as English (b) and (d) compared with (p) and (t).
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective phonetics weakly articulated (of a consonant), hence
voiced ; especially as compared to the others of a group ofhomorganic consonants.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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We can see that unaspirated stops are probably "lenis" i.e. requiring comparatively less articulatory effort while aspirated stops are "fortis".
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The fortis stops, being marked, are much less frequent and have greater restrictions than the 'lenis' stops such as *t or *dh in the traditional notation.
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We can see that unaspirated stops are probably "lenis" i.e. requiring comparatively less articulatory effort while aspirated stops are "fortis".
Archive 2008-01-01 2008
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Here are all of the Latin words that could conceivably be translated into English as "kind": pius, lenis, genus, comis, benignus, benignitas, beneficus, et almus.
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Secondly, if Hittite had lost voicing as a distinctive feature of the language, let's say, while retaining fortis-lenis contrast word-initially, then using voicing distinctions in a foreign system may not have necessarily appealed to the Hittite scribes.
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The only thing that could be said about Hittite writing of fortis-lenis distinction is that in writing it looks like all initial consonants are lenis.
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Phoenix: "But if there was a fortis-lenis distinction word initially, I guess we would expect Hittite to make use of the voicing distinction the writing system did have."
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But if there was a fortis-lenis distinction word initially, I guess we would expect Hittite to make use of the voicing distinction the writing system did have.
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Northern and much of central German have a voice-and-aspiration contrast like English, southwestern German has a length contrast, and southeastern German has a pure fortis-lenis contrast in those dialects that have any constrast at all...
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Again, the dreaded "North Caucasian *ƛ̣_VẋwV ( ˜ Ł_-)" contains only two wildcards (the two instances of V) and uncertainty about whether the initial consonant was ejective or voiced (in other words, it was not aspirated; unlike American ones, Caucasian ejectives are lenes, not fortes, so I'm not terribly surprised it's not always possible to tell if such a lenis was voiced or ejective).
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