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On the Phonology of Icelandic Pre-aspiration1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2008

Höskuldur Thráinsson
Höskuldur Thráinsson
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Harvard University, Science Center 223, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
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Abstract

This paper presents a new phonological analysis of preaspiration in Icelandic.Its purpose is to get as close to the phonetic facts as possible while capturingat the same time the regular phonological character of Icelandicpreaspiraton.

The paper is organized as follows: Section 1 briefly reviews some phoneticdescriptions of preaspiration. Section 2 shows why preaspiration must beconsidered an active phonological rule in Modern Icelandic. Section 3 presentsan informal description of what the preaspiration rule has to do. Section 4gives both an autosegmental and a more conventional generative phonologicalstatement of the rule. Section 5 gives arguments for the autosegmental analysis.Section 6 is a Conclusion, followed by an Appendix on preaspiration in otherlanguages.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , June 1978 , pp. 3 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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Footnotes

1

This work was supported in part by the Icelandic Science Foundation andthe Thor Thors Fund of the American Scandinavian Foundation. I amindebted to a number of people for help and suggestions, but most of allto Nick Clements, whose ideas and suggestions have greatly influenced mythinking about this topic, and to Hreinn Benediktsson for hisencouragement and very valuable comments on earlier versions of thispaper. I have also benefited from comments by KristjánÁrnason, John Goldsmith, Einar Haugen, Janez Orešnik,Magnús Pétursson, Alan Prince, the participants in thephonological seminar at Harvard, Spring 1977, and the workshop onautosegmental phonology at Harvard, May 21, 1977. I may soon regret thatI did not always follow the advice of these people. Thanks are also dueto Dennis Klatt for making it possible for me to do the phoneticmeasurements, to Helgi Guomundsson for referring me to a number ofstudies on preaspiration in other languages, and to Karl Teeter andPhilip LeSourd for information on Malecite/Passamaquoddy.– An earlier version of this paper appeared in Harvard Studies in Phonology, I, 1977.

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