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영어

The purpose of this research is to investigate one of the lenition processes, especially voicing phenomenon in (southern) Old English. The voicing of initial fricatives as shown in the southern and south-western dialects of Old and Middle English, which has generally been regarded as a phonological progression in those regions between two periods (Nielsen 1994: 19), is well known among English historical phonologists and philologists, and has long been discussed in the discourse of both historical and theoretical phonology. In the present paper, we have examined various aspects of the voicing of initial fricatives in OE. For example, OE consonant system is reviewed by showing that the phonemicization of voiceless/voiced fricatives are demonstrated in detail. Furthermore, it is shown that voiceless fricatives in initial position had been replaced by voiced ones since the voicing of initial fricatives in OE is originally motivated by intervocalic environment between words or sentences. In addition, I suggest that a theoretical approach to this phenomenon should throw new light on the unsloved problems (e.g. lenition and position).