User:Gilgamesh~enwiki/Icelandic phonology (rewrite)

This article draft is a work in progress, and may not at this time be suitable as a reference.

Unlike many languages, Icelandic has only very minor dialectal differences in sounds. The language has both monophthongs and diphthongs, and many consonants can be voiced or unvoiced.

Icelandic has an aspiration contrast between plosives, rather than a voicing contrast, similar to Faroese, Danish and Standard Mandarin. Preaspirated voiceless stops are also common. However, fricative and sonorant consonant phonemes exhibit regular contrasts in voice, including in nasals (rare in the world's languages).

This article uses three different phonological representations of Icelandic sounds using the International Phonetic Alphabet:

• Morphophonemes are notated inside ⫽double slashes⫽.
• Phones, or major surface allophones of the morphophonemes, are notated inside /single slashes/.
• Phonetes, or more variable raw surface realizations of the phones, are notated inside [square brackets].

Consonants

The number and nature of the consonant phonemes in modern Icelandic is subject to broad disagreement, due to a complex relationship among consonant allophones.

Phones

Even the number of major allophones is subject to some dispute, although less than for morphophonemes. The following is a chart of potentially contrastive phones (important phonetic distinctions which minimally contrast in some positions with known phonemes; not a chart of actual phonemes), according to one analysis (Thráinsson 1994):

Consonant phones

		Labial		Coronal		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m̥	m	n̥	n	ɲ̊	ɲ	ŋ̊	ŋ
Stop		pʰ	p	tʰ	t	cʰ	c	kʰ	k
Continuant	sibilant			s
	non-sibilant	f	v	θ	ð	ç	j	x	ɣ	h
Lateral				l̥	l
Rhotic				r̥	r

• /n̥, n, l̥, l/ are alveolar [n̥, n, l̥, l], whereas /tʰ, t/ are dental [t̪ʰ, t̪].
• /s/ is an apical alveolar sibilant fricative, whereas /θ, ð/ are alveolar non-sibilant fricatives [θ̠, ð̠]. The former is laminal, while the latter is usually apical. Note that the alveolar non-sibilant fricatives are not contrastive in any language and so have no dedicated IPA symbols. They are broadly transcribed here with /θ, ð/, which nominally denote dental fricatives.
• Voiceless continuants /f, s, θ, ç, x, h/ are always constrictive [f, s̺, θ̠, ç, x, h], but voiced continuants /v, ð, j, ɣ/ are not very constrictive and are often closer to approximants [ʋ, ɹ, j, ɣ˕] than fricatives [v, ð̠, ʝ, ɣ].
• The voiced rhotic consonant /r/ may either be a trill [r] or a tap [ɾ]. The voiceless rhotic consonant /r̥/ can also be a realized as a trill [r̥] or a tap [ɾ̥], but has a greater tendency than its voiced rhotic counterpart to instead be realized as a fricative, either as a voiceless retroflex fricative [ʂ] or a voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ].
• Acoustic analysis reveals that the voiceless lateral consonant [l̥] is, in practice, usually realized with considerable frication, especially word-finally or syllable-finally, i. e., essentially as a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ].

Scholten (2000) includes three extra phones, namely the glottal stop /ʔ/, voiceless velarized alveolar lateral approximant /ɫ̥/ and its voiced counterpart /ɫ/.

A large number of competing analyses have been proposed for Icelandic phonemes. The problems stem from complex but regular alternations and mergers among the above phones in various positions.

Bibliography

• Árnason, Kristján (2011), The Phonology of Icelandic and Faroese, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-922931-4
• Einarsson, Stefán (1945), Icelandic. Grammar texts glossary., Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, ISBN 978-0801863578
• Grønnum, Nina (2005), Fonetik og fonologi, Almen og Dansk (3rd ed.), Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, ISBN 87-500-3865-6
• Gussmann, Edmund (2011). "Getting your head around: the vowel system of Modern Icelandic" (PDF). Folia Scandinavica Posnaniensia. 12: 71–90. ISBN 978-83-232-2296-5.
• Haugen, Einar (1958). "The Phonemics of Modern Icelandic". Language. 34 (1): 55–88. doi:10.2307/411276. JSTOR 411276.
• Kress, Bruno (1982), Isländische Grammatik, VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie Leipzig
• Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
• Orešnik, Janez; Pétursson, Magnús (1977). "Quantity in Modern Icelandic". Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi. 92: 155–71.
• Pétursson, Magnus (1971), "Étude de la réalisation des consonnes islandaises þ, ð, s, dans la prononciation d'un sujet islandais à partir de la radiocinématographie", Phonetica, 33: 203–216, doi:10.1159/000259344
• Scholten, Daniel (2000). Einführung in die isländische Grammatik. Munich: Philyra Verlag. ISBN 3-935267-00-2.
• Thráinsson, Höskuldur (1978). "On the Phonology of Icelandic Preaspiration". Nordic Journal of Linguistics. 1: 3–54. doi:10.1017/S0332586500000196.
• Thráinsson, Höskuldur (1994). "Icelandic". In König, Ekkehard; van der Auwera, Johan (eds.). The Germanic Languages.
• Volhardt, Marc Daniel Skibsted (2011). Islændinges udtale af dansk. En sammenlignende analyse af lydsystemerne i islandsk og dansk, og islandske studerendes danskudtale (Bachelor's degree essay) (in Danish). Reykjavík: University of Iceland.
• Kennslubók í Nútíma Íslensku handa Ítölum by Riccardo Venturi (Rikarður V. Albertsson)
• Flego, Stefon; Berkson, Kelly (July 2020). "A Phonetic Illustration of the Sound System of Icelandic".