Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
3 Segmental phonology<br />
voiced dental fricative singleton [ð] or geminate [ðː], respectively. 11 Phonemes<br />
subject to this variation are only found in the consonant center. To illustrate<br />
this, the phonemic variation in the word for stone, which goes back to Proto-<br />
<strong>Saami</strong>c *keaðɢē (Sammallahti 1998: 243), is presented in Table 3.6.<br />
Table 3.6: Phonemic variation in the historical voiced dental fricative<br />
variant phonemic form phonetic form gloss<br />
t /kɛtːke/ [kɛtː̚ke]<br />
r /kɛrːke/ [kɛrːke] ‘stone\nom.sg’<br />
ð /kɛðːke/ [kɛðːke]<br />
Generally speaking, the phoneme /t/ is found on the northern side and the phoneme<br />
/r/ on the southern side, although the borders are not absolutely clear. The<br />
phoneme /ð/ is least common, and seems to only be found in the speech <strong>of</strong> the<br />
eldest speakers. Speakers are quite aware <strong>of</strong> this variation. In the current working<br />
version <strong>of</strong> the <strong>Pite</strong> <strong>Saami</strong> orthography, the grapheme has been chosen to<br />
represent all three variants (thus the word for stone is spelled gärrge), although<br />
spellings using the grapheme or even may be used as well.<br />
Other lexemes subject to this variation include (here in the orthographic representations):<br />
åddet/årret/åððet ‘sleep’, åddå/årrå/åððå ‘new’ and gidda/girra/<br />
giðða ‘spring (season)’.<br />
3.1.1.6 Nasals<br />
The nasal series in <strong>Pite</strong> <strong>Saami</strong> consists <strong>of</strong> the phones and their phonetic realizations<br />
shown in Table 3.7 on the next page. The distribution <strong>of</strong> the allophones will<br />
be discussed here, as well as in §3.1.1.8 concerning the devoiced allophones.<br />
3.1.1.6.1 Singleton nasal consonants The segments /m n ɲ ŋ/ are singleton bilabial,<br />
alveolar, palatal and velar nasal consonant phonemes. They can be found<br />
in onset and coda positions, with the exception <strong>of</strong> the velar nasal, which cannot<br />
11 The phonological system <strong>of</strong> the few speakers who have the voiced dental fricatives /ð ðː/ actually<br />
has two more phonemes than the systems <strong>of</strong> speakers with /t tː/ or /r rː/, as these latter<br />
four phonemes are already present in the phonology <strong>of</strong> all speakers. Note that, because /ð/ is<br />
very uncommon and not a feature that all speakers share, it is not included in the consonant<br />
inventory presented in Table 3.1 on page 37.<br />
52
Change language