A grammar of Pite Saami, 2014

3 Segmental phonology
3.2.1.3 Open-mid front vowel
The segment /ɛ/ is a open-mid front vowel. It normally occurs in V1 position.
Examples can be found in (140) and (141).
(140) /pɛkːa/ bägga
[pɛkːa]
‘wind\nom.sg’
(141) /rɛʃːme/ rässjme
[rɛʃːme]
‘ice.fishing.line\nom.sg’
[2302]
[2754]
The phoneme /ɛ/ can also be found in V2 position, but this is limited to grammatical
words and it is never followed by a final consonant. 20 In such cases, /ɛ/
is realized slightly more open than when in V1 position. Examples can be found
in (142) through (145).
(142) /kɔnːɛ/ gånne
[kɔnːɛ]
‘where’
(143) /aʰtɛ/ ahte
[ahtɛ]
‘in.order.to’
(144) /taːlɛ/ dále
[taːlɛ]
‘now’
(145) /sinːɛ/ sinne
[sɪnːɛ]
‘inside’
[0759]
[0014]
[2303]
[pit080702b.144]
In a few recent loan words from Swedish which are originally French or Latin
loans words in Swedish that have retained their second syllable stress, /ɛ/ can
occur as the vowel of the second syllable. However, as this is the stressed syllable
in such cases, it is, from a prosodic perspective, still in the V1 position of a normal
Pite Saami trochaic foot. Two examples are provided in (146) and (147).
(146) /adrɛsːa/ adrässa
[adrɛsːa]
‘address\nom.sg’
(147) /profɛsːor/ proässor
[profɛsːor] ‘professor\nom.sg’
[2683]
[4268]
20 The current working Pite Saami orthography is rather inconsistent with the spelling of the /ɛ/
phoneme. In V1 position, it is spelled with , while in V2 (in grammatical words) it is spelled
.
66