pronounced as /notice/In phonology, fronting is a sound change in which a vowel or consonant becomes fronted, advanced or pronounced farther to the front of the vocal tract than some reference point. The opposite situation, in which a sound becomes pronounced farther to the back of the vocal tract, is called backing or retraction. Fronting may be triggered by a nearby sound, in which case it is a form of assimilation, or may occur on its own.
In i-mutation and Germanic umlaut, a back vowel is fronted under the influence of pronounced as //i// or pronounced as //j// in a following syllable.[1] This is assimilation.
In the Attic and Ionic dialects of Ancient Greek, Proto-Greek close back pronounced as //u uː// were fronted to pronounced as //y yː//. This change occurred in all cases and was not triggered by a nearby front consonant or vowel. Similarly in French and Occitan, this sound change also occurred.
In Old English and Old Frisian, the back vowels pronounced as //ɑ ɑː// were fronted to pronounced as //æ æː// in certain cases. For more information, see First a-fronting and Second a-fronting.
In many dialects of English, the vowel pronounced as //uː// is fronted to pronounced as /[u̟ː]/ or pronounced as /[ʉː]/, a sound change that is sometimes called -fronting.[2] The same sound change occurred in many dialects of Norwegian and Standard Swedish but not in Danish.
Fronting can also take place as part of a chain shift. For example, in the Northern Cities Shift, the raising of pronounced as //æ// left room in the low-front area of the vowel space for pronounced as /[ɑ]/ to expand. Thus, words like cot and father are often pronounced with a low-front vowel pronounced as /[æ]/.