A grammar of Pite Saami, 2014

3 Segmental phonology
described in the remaining sections (§3.1.1.3 through §3.1.1.7). They are grouped
based on manner of articulation.
3.1.1.1 Preaspiration
In Pite Saami, preaspirated 1 phonemes only occur in consonant center position.
While preaspirated phonemes can be plosives or affricates, the phenomenon that
goes along with them is essentially the same. The period of aspiration, i.e., the
voicelessness preceding the formation of the oral closure, is realized in different
ways and depends on the preceding segment. If the preceding segment is a voiced
continuant consonant, then the final part of that segment is devoiced.
While a minimal contrast between a voiceless obstruent preceding a preaspirated
consonant phoneme and a voiceless obstruent preceding a plain counterpart
phoneme (e.g., /st/ vs. /sʰt/) is theoretically possible, this cannot be detected
because such a consonant cannot be devoiced as it is already voiceless
(e.g., /st/→[st] and /sʰt/→[st]). When following a high front vowel /i/, preaspiration
is realized as a voiceless palatal fricative [ç]. In all other cases, preaspiration
is a voiceless glottal fricative [h]. This is summarized in Table 3.1.
Table 3.1: The phonetic realizations of preaspiration
preceding segment realization of preaspiration example
voiced consonant end devoicing of voiced consonant /mʰp/→ [mm̥ p]
front high vowel /i/ voiceless palatal fricative [ç] /iʰp/→ [içp]
other vowels voiceless glottal fricative [h] /aʰp/→ [ahp]
3.1.1.2 Geminates
The occurrence of geminate consonants is restricted to the consonant center. As
illustrated in Table 3.1 on the preceding page, only the glottal fricative /h/ does
1 As is hopefully evident from this discussion on preaspiration, the term ‘preaspiration’ is not
entirely accurate from a phonetic-acoustic point of view since the acoustic correlate of this
phenomenon is not actually aspiration in all cases. Nonetheless, there are several reasons
to select this term: 1. in the majority of cases, the acoustic correlate is in fact preaspiration,
2. this phonemic phenomenon is often referred to as preaspiration in the literature on other
Saami languages (cf. e.g., Sammallahti 1998: 54–55 or Feist 2010: 57,67), and 3. preaspiration
can be reconstructed for the half-long and long Proto-Saami plosive and affricate phonemes
(cf. Sammallahti 1998: 54) that became the current Pite Saami preaspirated phonemes.
38