Prestopped Consonant - in European Languages

In European Languages

In Manx, pre-occlusion occurs in stressed monosyllabic words (i.e. words one syllable long), and is also found in Cornish on certain stressed syllables. The inserted stop is homorganic with the sonorant, which means it has the same place of articulation. Long vowels are often shortened before pre-occluded sounds. In transcription, pre-occluding consonants in final position are typically written with a superscripted letter in Manx and in Cornish.

Examples in Manx include:

• /m/ → : trome /t̪roːm/ → "heavy"
• /l/ → : shooyll /ʃuːl/ → "walking"
• /n/ → : kione /kʲoːn/ → "head"
• /nʲ/ → : ein /eːnʲ/ → "birds"
• /ŋ/ → : lhong /luŋ/ → "ship"

In Cornish, pre-occlusion mostly affects the reflexes of older geminate/fortis /m/, intrinsically geminated in Old Cornish, and /nn/ (or /N/ depending on preferred notation). It also arises in a few cases where the combination /n+j/ was apparently re-interpreted as /nnʲ/.

Examples in Cornish:

• /m#/ → : mabm "mother"
• /VmV/ → : hebma "this"
• /nn#/ → : pedn "head"
• /VnnV/ → : pednow "heads"

In Faroese, pre-occlusion also occurs, as in kallar 'you call, he calls', seinna 'latter'. A similar feature occurs in Icelandic, where the pre-occluding consonant is voiceless, as in galli ('error'); sæll, seinna ; Spánn .