Preaspiration in the Nordic Languages: Synchronic and Diachronic ...

According to Ní Chasaide & Ó Dochartaigh, preaspiration is not a
feature traditionally associated with Irish, and it had not been previously
noted or described phonetically. Impressionistically, they describe it as
“barely audible” and feel that it is a “very weak glottal fricative or period
of silence, somewhat similar to the Lewis varieties” (cf. the preceding
section on Scots-Gaelic). The durational measurements show an average
preaspiration duration of approximately 90 ms for stops in both VC and
VCV syllables.
Ní Chasaide & Ó Dochartaigh also investigated voicing in the lenis
stop series in corresponding contexts. For VC sequences, closure duration
was approximately 140 ms, and for VCV sequences approximately
105 ms. For both VC and VCV sequences, they found that the initial
40% of the stop closure has voicing, and was otherwise voiceless. This is
somewhat similar to their findings on the Lewis dialect in the preceding
section.
Voiceless sonorants also seem to occur in Irish, according to Wagner
(1964:292f). In Donegal Irish, he claims that an older -llt- vs. -lt- and -
nnt- vs. -nt- distinction is expressed through complete voicelessness of
the former in both pairs. He also claims that such voicelessness is found
in the Connaught dialect and sporadically in the Munster dialect. Sonorant
voicelessness in Irish does not seem to have been noted by other
linguists.
3.9 Saami
The Saami languages are spoken across the northern part of the Scandinavian
peninsula (approximately from Røros and Idre in the south and
northwards) up to the Kola peninsula in the northeast (Hansson, 1997). 1
With regard to preaspiration, the following language groupings are found
to be convenient:
1 The form Saami is used here, but Sami, Sámi and Sápmi are also found in the
literature. Forms with Lapp- have become pejorative in many languages, but the term
Lappic still seems to be used for the Saami language family as a whole.
– 99 –