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COPYRIGHT 2002 Adam Mickiewicz University Press
ABSTRACT
The Germanic dental suffix has three surface variants in Modem Icelandic. The distribution of the variants and their interaction with the consonants of the verbal base are analysed against the background of the phonology of the language. The theoretical model is that of Government Phonology. Particular attention is paid to the structure of the rhyme, and coda-onset contacts. It is argued that with the exception of lexically marked items the selection of the dental suffix variant is determined by the presence of occlusion and tone in the final consonants of the base. Most of the segmental changes found in the base are motivated by the need to comply with conditions on coda-onset contacts which prevail in the language at large.
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In Modern Icelandic, just like in other Germanic languages, a dental suffix marks the category of weak verbs. Present-day English realises the dental suffixed by three phonetic variants: [t] walked, [d] robbed, and [Id] waited, their distribution being controlled in a straightforward way by the nature of the final segment of the base. Apart from the fully productive pattern where the addition of the suffix is conditioned by the base but the base itself is left intact, there is a number of verbs with morphophonemic alternations involving both vowels and consonants, such as e.g.: keep-kept, leave-left, sell-sold, seek-sought. These are predominantly, or perhaps completely, a matter for the lexicon. The non-phonological nature of the alternations follows from their idiosyncratic and non-necessary character as, obviously, verbal forms without such alternations are common, e.g.: seep-seeped, heave-heaved, fell-felled, leak-leaked. The situation in Modern Icelandic initially appears to be similar in that there are also three dental variants traditionally transcribed as [t d 6], the difference being that their distribution is quite complex; additionally, the attachment of the dental suffix causes considerable modifications in the verbal base, most of which are quite general in the language and hence, presumably, of a phonological nature. As we will see below, the addition of the suffix is conditioned by the nature of the base but it also modifies the base in an intricate fashion. Of the four classes of weak verbs usually identified in Icelandic (Thrainsson 1994: 158-160) we will only be concerned with consonantal bases since the vocalic ones invariably select the spirantal variant [6], e.g.: kalla [khatla] 'call' -- kalladi [khatlaoi], na [nau:] 'reach' -- nadi [nau:OI]. (2) Before we proceed with a more detailed presentation of the data several preliminary remarks are in order.
The claim found in all synchronic descriptions of Modern Icelandic which we repeated above, i.e. the fact that there are three variants of the dental suffix, requires a comment. It can be maintained only as a historical and orthographic statement or as a result of phonological analysis, since phonetically speaking there are just two variants: the voiceless dental plosive [t] and the voiced interdental spirant[O]. This follows from the well-known fact that plosives in Icelandic are uniformly voiceless. Phonetic descriptions (e.g., Kress 1982: 24; Gislason and Prainsson 1993: 70-71) uniformly agree that what distinguishes pairs of plosives such as those spelt p-b is the presence of aspiration in the first member and its absence in the second. Traditional phonetic transcription was reluctant to draw the obvious conclusion and identify the two segments; instead the p-b difference was transcribed as [ph-b] with an obvious redundancy, since a voiceless [12] is nothing other than an unaspirated [p]. A phonetically c onsistent and redundancy-free transcription of pairs such as panna 'pan' - banna 'ban' is [phan:a] -- [pan:a]; this way of transcribing Icelandic plosives is adopted in some works (Kristinsson 1988; Thrainsson 1994; Gussmann 2002) and we will follow it here. In phonetic terms the dental suffix variants spelt -d in reyndi 'try' and -t in keypti 'buy' are uniformly pronounced as [t] (-i is the marker of the 1st and 3rd person singular). Having made this phonetic observation we would like to argue now that the traditional historical recognition of three variants continues to be synchronically valid, but it should be stressed that the evidence or motivation is phonological rather than phonetic.
A fundamental question connected with the distinction between the traditional voiced-voiceless plosives, even if approached phonetically as non-aspirated -- aspirated in the present-day language, is the nature of the phonological contrast in focus. Most current descriptions assume that what is distinctive phonetically automatically constitutes the phonological contrast. This, however, is a very hasty conclusion, one which follows from a mechanistic, downright physical view of phonological units and relations. As is well-known, the aspiration found with voiceless plosives is closely bound up with other larynx effects such as voicing, partial and complete, breathy voice and tone (tonogenesis or the emergence of tonal distinctions in vowels following the loss of voice in neighbouring consonants). Numerous attempts have been made to come to terms with the laryngeal complex: distinctions between fortis and lenis, tense and lax, slack and stiff vocal cords readily come to mind. Within Government Phonology it has be en claimed that the elements responsible for source distinctions are H (high tone) and L (low tone), where individual languages select a specific element or element combination (Harris 1994: 133 ff); additionally, the way an element is phonetically implemented, camouflaged or packaged is to a certain extent a language-specific device, or due to its phonetic effects (Gussmann 2002: 64). Thus while both English and Icelandic are assumed to operate just with H as their laryngeal elements, it goes without saying that H-less plosive expressions, for example, admit or require a degree of (phonetic) voicing in English, at least in some contexts, which is absent in Icelandic. At the other extreme, it is normally recognised that phonologically distinct units can be phonetically identical as a result of neutralisation and other forms of phonological processing. Thus any direct reading off of phonological properties from the phonetic surface is particularly dicey and likely to be futile. The same reasoning leads us to q uestion the central role of the segment adopted by some theoretical models, no matter whether it is an individual segment (underlying phoneme) or a segment inventory that constitutes the centre of interest. The aspiration distinction in Modern Icelandic is particularly instructive in this respect as it brings into focus the syntagmatic nature of phonological regularities, two of which are reviewed below, and the secondary role of paradigmatically determined segments.
The well-known phenomenon of preaspiration in Modern Icelandic places what is normally regarded as the segment [h] before specified consonant combinations. Leaving aside details and alternative analyses in different frameworks (Arnason 1977; Thrainsson 1978; Liberman 1982: 90-110; Gussmann 1998, 2000), a significant regularity connected with preaspiration calls for a uniform account, namely the fact that preaspiration is never found before aspirated plosives, i.e. the two types of aspiration are mutually exclusive. In jokul [joe:[k.sup.hYl] 'glacier, Asg' the plosive is aspirated (or can be aspirated, depending upon the dialect) while in jokla [joehkla] 'glacier, Apl' it is unaspirated but the preaspiration segment precedes it. Given the plausible assumption that pre- and post-aspiration are merely realisations of the same element H when placed in different contexts, the presence of the phonetic [kl] without preaspiration simply shows that the plosive does not contain the element H. Thus in poglar [[theta]cek lar] 'silent, Npl masc.' the sequence [kl] is phonologically different from the otherwise phonetically identical sequence in jokla [jcehkla] above. In this particular case, though not in many others, we find a morphological alternant pogull [[theta]oe:[UPSILON]Ytl] 'silent, Nsg masc.' with a voiced velar fricative corresponding to the plosive. If the element H can be realised as a separate segment [h] representing preaspiration, then one needs to take the phonology into account in deciding what a given token of, say, [k] stands for, i.e. whether it phonologically contains H or not. Any attempt to decide the segment's identity in isolation, or on the basis of its phonetics, can be misleading or futile.
A very similar argument can be made using the phenomenon of sonorant devoicing (Benediktsson 1961-1962: 83 ff; Thrainsson 1980: 355 ff.; Kress 1982: 27). In brief, sonorants are devoiced before some plosives, although all of the plosives themselves are obviously voiceless. This produces classical minimal pairs such as henta [henta] 'suit, vb' -- henda [h[epsilon]nta] 'throw', orka [orka] 'energy' -- orga [orka] 'scream, vb'. More importantly, however, there is a significant restriction to the effect that voiceless sonorants can never be followed by aspirated plosives, which once again points to the complementarity of the two phonetic effects. As with preaspiration above we would claim that the source element H in specific conditions is realised not on the plosive, but on the preceding sonorant which is rendered voiceless. There are two further facts which support this interpretation; one is the existence of direct alternations and the other is the presence of dialect variation.
For the former, consider the marker of the neuter singular of adjectives [[t.sup.h]]: when attached to stems ending in a sonorant what emerges is a voiceless sonorant followed by an unaspirated plosive, e.g.: fagur [fa: [UPSILON]Yr] 'beautiful, masc.' -- fagurt [fa:[UPSILON]Yrt] 'id. neut.', graen [krain] 'green, fem.' - graent [kraint] 'green, neut'. The examples are self-explanatory: the addition of an aspirated plosive results in the devoicing of a preceding spirant and the loss of aspiration on the plosive itself. In our terms this means that H is attached to the sonorant only.
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