Brythonic ‘second lenition’ revisited

In this talk I evaluate the arguments for two competing reconstructions regarding the laryngeal phonology of Proto-Brythonic. I defend the ‘new’ interpretation which underplays the role of a ‘fortis’ contrast and instead relies on two separate lenition processes (due to authors such as David Greene and Patrick Sims-Williams), against the ‘classical’ one due to Kenneth Jackson and defended by John Koch and Graham Isaac, which emphasizes the rôle of aspiration in Proto-Brythonic ‘voiceless’ stops. In many respects this talk does not really represent my current thinking, but some of the arguments seem to me to retain some value.