Mutations in present-day Irish

Realisation of the mutations
Palatalisation – depalatalisation
Conditions for the mutations
     Lenition
     Nasalisation
Prefix D

This module offers information on the realisation of the initial mutations in present-day Irish and the conditions under which they occur. As has been mentioned in the first module of the morphology sub-menu, initial mutation should be viewed together with change to the right margins of words, i.e. palatalisation (of non-palatal bases) and de-palatalisation (of palatal bases). The alternations at the left and right margins of words are a key feature of Irish morphology and frequently occur together, e.g. in noun morphology where they can distinguish gender and case.

Realisation of the mutations

Lenition (seimhiú)

Lenition can only affect certain of the consonant phonemes. These are the following:

From the point of view of initial mutation the distinction palatal/velar is irrelevant: if one consonant of a palatal/velar pair is mutable then so is the other one. Nine of the fifteen consonant pairs of Irish can be subject to lenition. The six that do no lenite can be divided into two groups:

As the second group consists of elements which are themselves the outcome of lenition, the matter is irrelevant. But in the case of the sonorants, the lack of lenition means that grammatical categorie are not formally marked with them. This means, for instance, that a verb which begins in a sonorant will not lenite in the past, e.g. rith sé ‘he ran’, and that a masculine noun beginning in a sonorant will not lenite in the genitive singular, e.g ainm an naoimh ‘the name of the saint’. However, in cases like the latter both the palatalisation at the end of the word and its syntactic position (preceded by an article and a qualifying noun) are sufficient for the genitive to recognised unambiguously.

Lenition is the first and foremost the fricativisation of stops. Two fricatives in Irish – /s/ and /f/ – can also be subject to lenition. The results are irregular in these cases: /s/ lenites to /h/ while /f/ lenites to zero. Due to a shift which took place by the Middle Irish period at the latest, /d/ shifts to a velar fricative.

The irregularities of lenition means that with some consonants the outcome of lenition is homophonous with that of another consonant. This leads to three mergers as follows:

In some dialects the outcome of leniting /m/ – /v/ – may show a degree of nasalisation, but this is subphonemic and hence does not have systemic status.

Historically, there are instances of loanwords (from Anglo-Norman or English) where the initial segment of the word was regarded as lenited and then reversed on borrowing. This applies in particular to /v-/ and /w-/ which appear as /b-/ on borrowing, e.g. baránta ‘waranty’, balla ‘wall’, bigil ‘vigil’, bís ‘vice’.

Because the lenition of /f/ leads to zero, there can be cases where it is uncertain if a word which begins with a vowel is a case of a truly vowel-initial word or one where the initial /f/ has been lenited. This situation must be resolved by children during first language acquisition and the evidence of some words shows that previous generations misinterpreted vowel-initial words as instances of initial lenited /f/ and then ‘restored‘ the unetymological /f/. Such a development lies behind words like fuar (< uar) ‘cold’ and faidhb (< aidhb) ‘problem’.

Nasalisation (urú)

The operation of nasalisation has as its end point the nasalisation of the segment it is applied to. This mutation can only involve one step, however. This means can only voiced segments can mutate to a nasal. A voiceless segment, when ‘nasalised’, undergoes the first step only, i.e. it is voiced. As opposed to lenition, the fricative /s/ cannot be nasalised. Indeed, there is no /z/ phoneme in the sound system of Irish (although it was reported for the now moribund dialect of Cape Clear).

Zero mutation

It is useful in Irish to designate cases where neither lenition nor nasalisation occurs as zero mutation. The lack of a mutation in itself fulfils an important function. Thus the absence of a mutation shows in the nominative singular that a noun is masculine, the opposite gender being marked by lenition: an cruth ‘shape, appearance’, an chuairt ‘visit’.

Palatalisation – depalatalisation

To treat palatalisation and depalatalisation together, one can talk of a feature [palatal] which can have a positive or negative value. The citation forms of words will have a given value for this feature. Citations forms are used for dictionary entries and are generally the shortest forms of the word class in question. The following are common citations forms.

The value for [palatal] can vary between words. For instance, the right margin of bord ‘table’ has a negative value for [palatal] while cáin ‘tax’ has a positive value. When these nouns occur in the genitive, the values for [palatal] are reversed. Other processes may also be involved, for instance with fifth declension nouns where the right margin changes to [+palatal] in the genitive a suffix is also added: méid na cánach ‘the amount of tax’.

Palatalisation (caolú)

Palatalisation involves changing the final consonant of a word stem from a velar to a palatal point of articulation. This is indicated in writing either by adding an -i before the final consonant or by exchanging an -i for another vowel in this position:

In this case the syllable bearing vowel remains intact although there is a palatal off-glide to the altered final consonant. This holds for long vowels and a short vowel before the cluster /-xt/ which on palatalisation only changes the final /t/ to a palatal. In other cases of short vowels palatalisation tends to change a stem vowel from a back to a front vowel, for instance a word with the vowel of the SIOC lexical set (when the right margin is [-palatal]) frequently switches to the vowel of the FIOS lexical set when the right margin is [+palatal] (the reason for talking about the vowels in lexical sets is that these can vary across dialects, but there is still a back – front difference between the short vowels).

Nouns

Adjectives

When palatalisation originally arose in the pre-history of Irish it involved only one step, the articulation of a sound in the region of the palate. But in the course of time, various developments took place which complicated the picture. Labial sounds could not become palatal as they would then have lost their labial quality so they developed a short [j], heard on the release of the labial when it underwent the phonological process of palatalisation. This glide can still be heard in a word like fionn ‘fair’. With non-palatal sounds, a [w] glide sometimes developed between the non-palatal and the following sound. This glide is noticeable in northern Irish pronunciations of a word like fáil ‘getting’.

Another development was the vocalisation of palatal sounds in word-final position. This happened in all word which were later written with -(a)igh, e.g. ceannaigh where the final syllable is /i:/. It also happened with the ending -(a)ith and -(a)idh and usually with -(a)-imh. This means that for many words the change of /x/ to /xʲ/ on palatalisation is now a shift from /x/ to /i:/, cf. marcach ‘rider’ ~ ainm an mharcaigh ‘the name of the rider’. In still other cases there is an alternation between schwa and /i:/, again due to an early vocalisation of word final sounds, e.g. culaith ‘suit’ ~ culaithe ‘suit’-GEN.

Velarisation (leathnú)

Velarisation is the mirror image of palatalisation, that is it represents a shift from front to back position of articulation among consonants. Just as with palatalisation it may also effect the quality of the syllable bearing vowel in a stem when this is short, cf. fuil (high front vowel) ‘blood’ ~ fola (low back vowel) ‘blood’-GEN.

Nouns

Verbs

Conditions for the mutations

As a rule citation forms of words are not lenited. There are, however, a small number of words which are permanently lenited.

In the following tables are offered in which the effect of a qualifying element or grammatical category, e.g. case, is specified in term of mutation. L stands for lenition and N for nasalisation. The lists are exemplary and not exhaustive.

1) Possessive pronouns

The label H indicates that the mutating particle triggers a h-prefix, if the following word begins with a vowel, otherwise their is no change (zero mutation). This situation also applies to plural nouns after the article na.

1a) Third person possessive pronoun

2) Mutation after forms for the article

Conditions for the occurrence of lenition

Lenition with nouns

with masculine nouns in the genitive case

with feminine nouns in the common case

Lenition with adjectives

Generally lenition of adjectives follows that of nouns:

Lenition with verbs

with the past tense

but not the autonmous form

with the conditional

with the past habitual

In a verbal environment

1) Relativisers

Lenition in a verbal environment

1) Relativisers

a)	gur	Dhearbhaigh sé gur shroich siad an taobh eile.
	‘that’	‘He asserted that they reached the other side.’

b)	nár	Dhearbhaigh sé nár shroich siad an taobh eile.
	‘that’-NEG	‘He asserted that they did not reach the other side.’

c)	a	Na fir a shroich an taobh eile.
	‘who’-REL	‘The men who reached the other side.’

When a also occurs before a transitive verbal noun it lenites:

The element ag which occurs with the same verbal element (in a durative sense) has zero mutation:

The further particle which may occur before the verbal noun á acts like a possessive pronoun agreeing with the object from the point of view of mutation:

Bhí siad á bhagairt	Bhí siad á bagairt.
‘They were threatening her.’	‘They were threatening him.’

2) Negativisers

a)	ní	Ní dhéanfadh sin cúis.
	Neg Past	‘That won’t do.’
b)	níor	Níor dhúirt mé tada.
	Past	‘I didn’t say a thing.’

3) Interrogatives

a)	ar	Ar dhúirt sé aon rud?
	Positive + Past	‘Did he say anything?’
b)	cár	Cár thug sé an scéal di?
	Locative + Past	‘Where did he give her the message?’

4) Conditionalisers

a)	ná	Má thitim sé na bac leis.
	Positive	‘If I fall don’t bother about it.’
b)	murar	Murar ghlac sé leis an tairiscint.
	Negative + Past	‘If he didn’t accept the offer.’

Conditions for the occurrence of nasalisation

Nasalisation is more regular in its occurrence that lenition, but it can be specified in the same manner as the other mutation, namely by word class.

1) Nouns

a) in the genitive plural of both genders:

b) after the prepositions i and ar (very occasionally in fixed phrases, cf. go above)

c) after the numerals seven to ten:

d) after plural possessive pronouns, this applies even if dhá intervenes:

2) Adjectives

Adjectives are only nasalised if they occur in a nasalizing environment and precede the noun. The only adjectives which can precede are quantifiers and numerals:

Nasalisation is optional for the ordinals ceathrú ‘fourth’, cúigiú, ‘fifth’ and fichiú ‘twentieth’ after analytical preposition and article:

It is compulsory after an adjective which occurs after the cardinals seven to nine. In practice-this only arises with the following idiom (for an example with a noun, see above):

3) Verbs

Verb forms are not subject to nasalisation in the indication of tense or mood (contrast lenition) but are when preceded by one of a series of elements which can qualify them.

Conditionalisers

Temporal conjunction

Interrogatives

Relatives

Introducing clauses of

1)	TIME	Fan go mbeidh sé níos fearr.
		Wait until it is better.
2)	CAUSALITY	Beidh áthas orthu go bhfuil sibh ann.
		They’ll be pleased that you’re there.
3)	PURPOSE	D’imigh sé go mbeadh an gnó curtha de.
		He left in order to be rid of the matter.
4)	POSSIBILITY	Go mb’fhéidir é.
	(in absolute form)	It may be so.

Prefix D

1)	the past indicative
2)	the past habitual indicative
3)	the conditional

Prefix-D consists of d’, /d/ placed before a verb which begins with a vowel or with f, /f/ which is reduced to Ø, fh before the prefixation. It is found in the three tenses given above.

Prefix-D is not found before the past autonomous:

In Munster Irish (southern Irish) prefix D is found frequently with verbs which begin in neither a vowel nor a lenited fh:

Do dhíol mé mo theach le gairid.
‘I sold my house a short time ago’.