Consonant Mutation - Mutation Vs. Sandhi

Mutation Vs. Sandhi

Initial consonant mutation must not be confused with sandhi, which can refer to word-initial alternations triggered by their phonological environment, unlike mutations, which are triggered by their morphosyntactic environment. Some examples of word-initial sandhi are listed below.

• Spanish:, occurring after nasals and pause, alternate with, occurring after vowels and liquid consonants. Example: un arco 'a boat', mi arco 'my boat'. This also occurs in Hebrew, Aramaic and Tamil.
• Scottish Gaelic: in some dialects, stops in stressed syllables are voiced after nasals, e.g. 'a cat', 'the cat'.

Sandhi effects like these (or other phonological processes) are usually the historical origin of morphosyntactically triggered mutation. For example, the English fricative mutation described above originates in an allophonic alternation of Old English, where a voiced fricative occurred between vowels (or other voiced consonants), and a voiceless one occurred initially or finally, and also when adjacent to voiceless consonants. Old English infinitives ended in -(i)an and plural nouns (of one very common declension class) ended in -as. Thus, hūs 'a house' had, while hūsas 'houses' and hūsian 'to house' had . After most endings were lost in English, and the contrast between voiced and voiceless fricatives phonemicized (largely due to the influx of French loanwords), the alternation was morphologized.