Lenition
In linguistics,
lenition is a kind of sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonorous. The word
lenition itself means "softening" or "weakening". Lenition can happen both synchronically and diachronically. Lenition can involve such changes as making a consonant more sonorous, causing a consonant to lose its place of articulation, or even causing a consonant to disappear entirely. An example of synchronic lenition in English is found in flapping in some dialects: the /t/ of a word like
wait becomes the more sonorous in the related form
waiting. Some dialects of Spanish show debuccalization of /s/ to at the end of a syllable, so that a word like
estamos "we are" is pronounced. An example of diachronic lenition can be found in the Romance languages, where the /t/ of Latin
patrem becomes in Italian
padre and in Spanish
padre, while in French
père and Portuguese
pai it has disappeared completely. Along with assimilation, lenition is one of the primary sources of phonological change of languages.