fortition

In articulatory phonetics, fortition, also known as strengthening, is a consonantal change that increases the degree or duration of stricture. It is the opposite of the more common lenition. For example, a fricative or an approximant may become a stop (i.e. becomes or becomes ). Although not as typical of sound change as lenition, fortition may occur in prominent positions, such as at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable; as an effect of reducing markedness; or due to morphological leveling.

==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, also in some varieties of Spanish, and in the Sicilian language when the aforementioned semivowel is subjected to gemination. In Yonaguni (Southern Ryukyuan) and Maldivian (Indo-Aryan), it has changed word-initially into . 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 from Latin.