HVAÐ ER LETI? A PHONETIC ANALYSIS OF LENITION IN MODERN, COLLOQUIAL ICELANDIC

Abstract: The phonological phenomenon of lenition has typically been associated with laziness in pronunciation. The aim of this study was to look deeper into this ‘laziness’ to examine and analyze instances of lenition in colloquial Icelandic on modern speech. Through guided conversations with native speakers, examples of natural language were gathered which were then used to create a map of what was lenited, as well as where and when lenition occurred. Fricatives were commonly lenited, especially voiced ones. The proceedings of this thesis support that environments calling for lenition also contained declaration utterances, a faster speech rate, disfluencies, and changes in intonation. The constraint mapping system of Optimality Theory was used to organize the phonological profile of different environments and why they looked one way when they called for lenition and another when they called for fortition.