Difference between revisions of "Initial Consonant Mutations"

Revision as of 10:38, 22 October 2015

For a definition of the basic notion see Initial Consonant Mutation (definition)

Morphological and Syntactic Triggering

Although these mutations surface as phonological changes, the historical (diachronic) sources of these changes are should not be considered caused by the phonological system of the current (synchronic) language (Stewart 2013, Green 2007, Pyatt 1997, Rogers 1972, Leiber 1983).

Initial consonant mutations are the changes of a "target" caused by a "trigger." For example, a very common type of initial consonant mutation is the lenition of feminine adjectives which follow a singular feminine noun. In this case, the "target" is the adjective toilichte 'happy', and the trigger is the noun nighean, which has the inherent properties of feminine gender and singular number. Because it is a fact of Gaelic grammar that feminine singular nouns cause lenition of the following adjectives which describes them, the initial consonant of the adjectives toilichte becomes thoilichte (example 1a). This contrasts with the example in 1b, where gille 'boy' does not trigger a consonant mutation on the same following adjective, because it is masculine singular, not feminine.

(1a)

nighean	thoilichte
girl	happy
"a happy girl"

(1b)

gille	toilichte
boy	happy
"a happy boy"

Triggers in the language, exemplified by the feminine singular noun nighean above, tend to be syntactic or morphological, i.e. they encode grammatical information of the language. Triggers are always associated with a target, as presented in the figure below.

The consonant mutations tend to be marked orthographically in written Gaelic. For example, lenition is represented with an orthographic <h> following the lenited consonant, except for <l>, <n>, <r>. In (1a) above, the [t] of toilichte becomes [h] in thoilichte. A full description of the phonetic changes of the lenited forms may be found on the Lenition page.

Lenition

//see also the main article lenition//

Lenition is an initial consonant mutation which "weakens" (cf. Latin lenis 'weak') the sound of the consonant at the beginning of a word. It is used to mark certain morphological contrasts and to mark inflection. Lenition is often marked orthographically by an <h> following the consonant which undergoes lenition.

For example, the 1st person singular possessive pronoun mo "my", causes lenition on the noun which follows it. The noun peann "pen" begins with a "p", but when it is lenited, it is written as pheann and the pronunciation changes (per the information given on the lenition page.)

(1a)

peann

pen

"pen"

(1b)

mo	pheann
1.S.POSS	pen
"my pen"

Nasalization/Eclipsis

//see also the main article Eclipsis//

Eclipsis is a morphophonological change triggered by certain function words (such as ar "our"). In words beginning with a vowel, this involves prefixing an orthographic <n-> in front of the word (e.g. ar n-athair, "our father").

(1a)

athair

father

"father"

(1b)

ar	n-athair
1.PL.POSS	father
"our father"

Historical Origins

See Also

• Initial Consonant Mutation (definition)
• Sounds of Scottish Gaelic

External Links

http://akerbeltz.org/index.php?title=Lenition

References