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Voiceless Nasal Phonemes in Icelandic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

Michael Jessen  and
Magnús Pétursson
Michael Jessen
Affiliation:
Institut für Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung, University of Stuttgart, Azenbergstraße 12, D-70174 Stuttgart, Germany
Magnús Pétursson
Affiliation:
Institut für Phonetik, Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft und Indogermanistik, University of Hamburg, Bogenallee 11, D-20144 Hamburg, Germany
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Extract

Icelandic has a number of ‘surface minimal pairs’ between voiced and voiceless nasals. Facts and arguments are presented that speak for the phonemic status of these sounds, in contrast to the widespread view that voiceless nasals in Icelandic are derived. It is shown, among else, that stops after voiced and voiceless nasals are phonetically identical. Due to this fact it is not possible on synchronic grounds to ascribe the distinction between voiced and voiceless nasals to a distinction among the following stops, unless phonological abstractness is used as an analytical tool. The rarely mentioned case of single word-initial voiced versus voiceless nasals (where no subsequent stop occurs) would require an even greater commitment to phonological abstractness if the derived status of voiceless nasals were maintained. Implications for linguistic phonetics and the IPA are discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 28 , Issue 1-2 , June 1998 , pp. 43 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Journal of the International Phonetic Association 1998

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