Galina Alexandrova & Svitlana Budzhak-Jones

Fri. 9-10:40 A

This paper investigates l lenition which is currently underway in Bulgarian. This process is important not only because it is undocumented within the literature, but phonological one. The data presented has important implications for the analysis of related phonotactic processes that occur cross-linguistically.

The phenomenon observed involves the 'darkening' of 'clear' l resulting in the phonetic realization of an underlying coronal as glide w, which is not a member of the phonemic inventory of Bulgarian. Darkened l appears before (1) and after (2) a tautosyllabic vowel and gives the impression of freely alternating with 'clear' l.

(1) blagodarja: b[l]agodarja ~ b[[[ring]]]agodarja '(I) thank'

(2) bolka: bo[l]ka ~ bo[[[ring]]]ka 'pain'

We hypothesize that the syllabification of l plays a crucial role in conditioning the variability noted above. An account is proposed in terms of the tendency to link the liquid l to the moraic tier (Zec, 1988), which we view as a revival of a typological characteristic of Proto-Slavic. Additionally, the pronounced preference of l darkening postvocalically rather than prevocalically is predicted by the Sonority Dispersion Principle (SDP) (Clements 1990).

We study l lenition on the basis of 910 tokens extracted from the speech of 6 native speakers of Bulgarian in three different styles: free conversation, word list and connected text. The data has been systematically analyzed according to a number of relevant factors which may potentially condition the variation in question. The results generated by Goldvarb 2.0 (Rand & Sankoff 1990) confirm our initial hypothesis. Moreover, they show that the position of l in the syllable is the only significant factor constraining l lenition. By moving up the sonority scale l acquires the ability to be associated with the moraic, tier, which used to be its prerogative in Proto-Slavic but no longer is in present-day Bulgarian. Darkening of l in postvocalic position is favored over darkening of l in prevocalic position. This can be viewed as a reflect of phonotactic restrictions captured by SDP, which derives CV as the optimal syllable, the implication being that an onset consonant may move down the sonority scale, whereas a coda consonant may move up. In the case of Bulgarian, prevocalic l is less likely to sonorize as opposed to postvocalic l which is more susceptible to lenition.

Among the nonlinguistic factors statistically significant are style, age and region. The probability of l lenition is higher in free conversation than in connected text and word list because the latter represent more careful speech. The fact that younger speakers tend to darken l more often than older speakers indicates a sound change in progress. Finally, to darkened variant is used more frequently in the North, than in Central Bulgaria. Historically, the former region has been more resistant to the loss of moraic structure (Bethin 1992).

The results of the paper suggest the possibility of a sound change in progress which may lead to phonemic readjustments in Bulgarian. The prediction can be made that due to l lenition this language may in the long run acquire glide w and possibly a contrast between long and short vowels which existed in Proto-Slavic.