Download or read book Lenition and Contrast written by Naomi Gurevich and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes 153 languages from a large variety of families to establish a previously unexplored relationship between phonetically conditioned sound changes such as lenitions and functional (meaning maintenance related) considerations. Carefully collecting numerous inventories of consonants, this collection is likely to become an important resource for future linguistics research. By distinguishing between phonetic and phonological neutralization, and showing that the first does not necessarily result in the second, Naomi Gurevich uncovers previously unexplored and often surprising trends in the relationship between phonetics and phonology.