Phonological history of Old Irish

. A capsule summary of the most important changes is (in approximate order): • Syllable-final (from PIE , ) assimilated to the following phoneme, even across word boundaries in the case of syntactically connected words. • Voiceless stops became voiced: > . • Voiced stops became prenasalised . They were reduced to simple nasals during the Old Irish period. • Before a vowel, was attached to the beginning of the syllable. • Lenition of all single consonants between vowels. That applied across word boundaries in the case of syntactically connected words. • Stops became fricatives. • became (later lost unless the following syllable was stressed). • was eventually lost (much later). • became a nasalised continuant (; perhaps or ). • remained, but the non-lenited variants were strengthened to (see Old Irish phonology). • Extensive umlaut ("affection") of short vowels, which were raised or lowered to agree with the height of following Proto-Celtic vowels. Similarly, rounding of to or often occurred adjacent to labial consonants. • Palatalization of all consonants before front vowels. • Loss of part or all of final syllables. • Loss of most interior vowels (syncope). They led to the following effects: • Both the palatalised ("slender") and lenited variants of consonants were phonemicised, multiplying the consonant inventory by four (broad, broad lenited, slender, slender lenited). Variations between broad and slender became an important part of the grammar: • in masc. -stems: "son" (nom. acc.) vs. (gen.), "back" (nom. acc.) vs. (gen.), cf. Latin (nom.), (acc.) vs. (gen.); • in fem. -stems: "tribe, people" (nom.) vs. (acc. dat.), "pig" (nom.) vs. (acc. dat.); • in -stems: "father" (gen.) vs. (nom. acc. dat.). • Lenition and nasal assimilation across word boundaries in syntactically connected words produced extensive sandhi effects (Irish initial mutations). The variations became an important part of the grammar. • Both umlaut (vowel affection) and especially syncope radically increased the amount of allomorphy found across declensions and conjugations. The most dramatic deviations are due to syncope: compare "they say" vs. "they do not say" or "he surpasses" vs. "he does not surpass" (where the stressed syllable is boldfaced). == Syncope in detail ==

In more detail, syncope of internal syllables involved the following steps (in approximate order): • Loss of most final consonants, including , , , , , and all clusters involving (except , , where only the is lost). • Loss of absolutely final short vowels (including those that became final as a result of loss of a final consonant and original long final vowels). • Shortening of long vowels in unstressed syllables. • Collapsing of vowels in hiatus (producing new unstressed long vowels). • Syncope (deletion) of vowels in every other interior unstressed syllable following the stress. If there are two remaining syllables after the stress, the first one loses its vowel; if there are four remaining syllables after the stress, the first and third lose their vowel. • Resolution of impossible clusters resulting from syncope and final-vowel deletion: • Adjacent homorganic obstruents where either sound was a fricative became a geminate stop, voiceless if either sound was voiceless (e.g. > ; etc. > ). • Otherwise, adjacent obstruents assumed the voicing of the second consonant (e.g. > ; > ; > ). • not adjacent to a vowel became syllabic and then had a vowel inserted before them (e.g. "world" < < < ; "sin" < ). However, in the case of , that occurred only when the nasal had not previously been joined to a following voiced stop as a result of nasal assimilation: compare "present" (disyllabic). • Remaining impossible clusters were generally simplified by deletion of consonants not adjacent to vowels (such as between other consonants). However, Old Irish tolerated geminates adjacent to other consonants as well other quite complex clusters: "name" (one syllable), "widow", "they are shown". == Changes to Proto-Celtic stressed short vowels ==

) were added to the Ogham script to represent sounds that were not present in Primitive Irish. All five Proto-Celtic short vowels (, , , , ) survived into Primitive Irish more or less unchanged in stressed syllables. During approximately A.D. 450-550 (just before the Old Irish period, c. 600-900), however, there occurred several vowel-changes (umlauts). Former vowels are modified in various ways depending on the following vowels (or sometimes surrounding consonants). The mutations are known in Celtic literature as affections or infections such as these, the most important ones: • -affection: Short and are raised to and when the following syllable contains a high vowel (, , , ). It does not happen when the vowels are separated by voiceless consonants or certain consonant groups. • -affection: Short and are lowered to and when the following syllable contains a non-high back vowel (, , , ). • -infection: Short , , are broken to short diphthongs , , when the following syllable contains a or that was later lost. It is assumed that at the point the change operated, -vowels that were later lost were short while those that remain were long . The change operates after -affection so original may end up as . Nominal examples (reconstructed forms are Primitive Irish unless otherwise indicated): Before i-affection occurred, there was also a lowering of initial-syllable Proto-Celtic e to a before palatalized reflexes of , unless a followed them in the next syllable in Primitive Irish (no matter the 's origin) which would instead lead to i-affection to i. For instance, Proto-Celtic "(s)he lies" vs. "they lie" vs. "lying" led to a three-way split in Old Irish , , and respectively. McCone however instead believes that i was the default outcome of before voiced nasals unless a-affection applied, lowering it down to a. Since "buys" (< ) faced no rounding even though its stressed vowel was originally an *i, the rounding may also have taken place after a-affection as well, • "was wounded" < • "fifty" < Compensatory lengthening before fricatives After a-affection occurred in Primitive Irish, dental and velar fricatives were dropped when immediately preceding a sonorant consonant, but transformed the preceding vowel into a long vowel or a diphthong. This development affected both stressed and unstressed syllables. == Proto-Celtic long vowels and diphthongs ==

Proto-Celtic long vowels and diphthongs develop in stressed syllables as follows: : The Old Irish diphthongs , , stem from earlier sequences of short vowels separated by *, e.g. "druid" < "tree-knower". Most instances of and in nonarchaic Old Irish are due to compensatory lengthening of short vowels before lost consonants or to the merging of two short vowels in hiatus: 'hundred' < Proto-Celtic (cf. Welsh ) < PIE . == Changes to Proto-Celtic consonants ==

. Overview See Proto-Celtic for various changes that occurred in all the Celtic languages, but these are the most important: • PIE > Proto-Celtic (but PIE > ). • Loss of aspiration in . • Loss of . Initially and intervocalically it was simply deleted; elsewhere, it variously became , , etc. From Proto-Celtic to Old Irish, the most important changes are these: • Lenition and palatalisation, multiplying the entire set of consonants by 4. See #History for more details. • Loss of most final consonants. See #Syncope in detail. • Proto-Celtic is lenited to , which then disappears between vowels. In general, Old Irish when not word-initial stems from earlier geminate (often still written as such, especially in archaic sources). • Proto-Celtic remain in Ogam Irish ( "son" (gen. sg.)) but become simple in Old Irish. Occasionally, they leave their mark by rounding the following vowel. • Proto-Celtic is lost early on between vowels, followed by early hiatus resolution. In some cases, combines with a preceding vowel to form a diphthong: "living, alive" *-iyāh > *-eyāh > -e) would be dependent on root shape, yet only nigh-inevitable palatalization is actually attested in such forms. Demonstrations of the first palatalization include: Second palatalization After the first palatalization, another palatalization ensued. Final-syllable Primitive Irish front vowels, after merging into a "palatal schwa", forced the palatalization of any consonants preceding them except the consonant cluster cht , which could never be palatalized. Greene labels this stage the second palatalization, while McCone treats this as a substage of the first palatalization. Third palatalization The third palatalization entailed any front vowel in a second or fourth syllable of a Primitive Irish word causing the palatalization of the preceding consonants. Like with the final-syllable palatalization, these front vowels were generally assumed to merge into a palatalizing schwa before causing palatalization. The following Primitive Irish vowels merged into the palatalizing schwa in second or fourth non-final syllables: • Front vowels *e, *ē, *i and *ī • *u before a palatalized consonant • *ō and *a before a palatalized *s, via an intermediate raising to *u Other vowels were reduced to non-palatalizing schwas. After syncope regularly removed these vowels, the palatalization (or lack thereof) tended to spread across the resulting consonant cluster. However, if syncope results in a sonorant becoming surrounded by a consonant before it and a consonant after it, the effects of the third palatalization (or lack thereof) are often overridden by a special set of sound laws, presumed to be caused by the stranded sonorant assuming the role of syllable nucleus until epenthesis occurs before the sonorant. Dissimilatory deletion of lenited consonants Lenited fricatives and straddling the boundary between a stressed syllable and an unstressed one tend to disappear if there is a homorganic consonant near the end of the next syllable. If a non-front vowel comes into contact with a front vowel after it due to this deletion, the two vowels fuse into a diphthong like or . Otherwise a hiatus between the two vowels may be formed instead. For the purposes of this sound law, is treated as if homorganic with s, due to its general origin in lenitions of Proto-Celtic *s. Some examples of this sound law are given below: • , "-teen" < *deǣg < *dexǣg < *dekank < *dekam-kʷe "and 10" ( deleted before ) • "lend!" < *oeðʲ < *oðeθʲ < *odete < *udete ( deleted before ) • "company" < *koimbiθʲext < *koṽʲimbiθʲext < *kom-ambi-tixtā (lenited m deleted before non-leniting m) • "protection" < *foisaṽ < *fohissaṽ < *uɸo-sistamus (lenited s deleted before another s) • "I taught" < *-rochechan < *-ɸro-kekana ( deleted before another ) • "I will sustain (prototonic)" < *folilussū < *uɸo-liluxsū ( deleted before another ) This deletion and diphthong formation happened before syncope. • Word-initially, *w simply underwent fortition to f. For instance, became "man". • Immediately after some consonants, *w became /v/, spelled b. After other consonants, it was deleted. Kortlandt and McCone disagree on which conditions governed transformation into b and deletion. Kortlandt believes that b appeared when a voiced lenited consonant preceded the *w, and if *w came after consonants that were either unlenited or voiceless it was deleted. A vowel between the trigger consonant and the affected l or n must also be present for the law to apply. ==Destruction of final syllables==

Proto-Celtic final syllables were often reduced or deleted by Old Irish times. Raising of unstressed -es- Unstressed Proto-Celtic -es- became -is- early on if immediately followed by a vowel. The resulting -is- triggers i-affection on preceding stressed syllables as it evolved into *-ih- and then *-iy- in Primitive Irish before either remaining as -i or undergoing a-affection to -e by Old Irish. This raising of *-es- occurred before the early deletion of final *-i. Contrast: • > "carries" (absolute form without apocope) • > > > > (conjunct form with apocope) The identification of the enclitic that was used to create Old Irish's absolute verb forms has been subject to controversy. At first, Warren Cowgill and Frederik Kortlandt supposed that the protective enclitic was a particle derived from "is". The current mainstream explanation, pioneered by Peter Schrijver in the 1990s, identifies this particle as derived from "beyond", cognate to Latin "and". Kim McCone on the other hand refuses to identify any specific particle responsible. The environment of final i-deletion is also controversial. McCone believes that all final *-i was lost by default, while Schrijver limits the apocope to just after *t, *s and also *k. Final-syllable syncope between coronal continuants After the lenition of post-vocalic consonants in unstressed syllables and the apocope of -i, an early Primitive Irish syncope occurred to vowels between two dental fricatives or two rhotics in final unstressed syllables preceded by another unstressed syllable. On the other hand, collision of two rhotics over this syncope would result in unlenited rhotic rr. Unlike the main early Irish syncope, this syncope could never palatalise the resulting consonant produced by the collision of involved continuants, no matter what vowel was between them. Instances of this syncope include: • > > > "is brought/given" (prototonic) • > ' > ' > "(s)he prays" • > ' > ' > "runs" (when two or more prefixes come between the stressed syllable of a derived verb and the verb root) General final-syllable reductions in Primitive Irish McCone envisions the evolution of final syllables across Primitive Irish into Old Irish as follows. Dental obstruent voicing Dental obstruents were voiced in word-initial and word-final unstressed syllables, in addition to between two unstressed syllables. This wave of voicing is also believed to underlie the voicing of t- to d- in proclitics. • Usually the -h- is lost entirely, creating a hiatus where it once was. For instance, "to stay (somewhere)" became "to stay the night", a hiatus verb. • After an *i or an original diphthong *ai or *oi, the -h- became a glide -y- before its loss. Qiu gives > "houses" as an example. Earlier, McCone gives "seer" < (literally "old-seer") as a demonstration of this. Changes to vowels surrounding former intervocalic -s- or glides Vowels surrounding a former intervocalic -s-, a glide *w or *y, or both underwent special changes by Old Irish. In unstressed syllables, such vowels generally fused into /e/. • "has been" (perfect prototonic) < • "seer" < (literally "old-seer") • (1pl. relative ending) < • "bear" (2sg. subjunctive) < ==Changes to proclitics==

Proclitics that precede a stressed syllable undergo special sound changes during the Old Irish period. Initial consonants Initial s was deleted in proclitics. • > > "I am" • > > "ex-" (in deuterotonic verbs) • > > > "with" • > "between" • > "first" Depalatalisation Palatalisation was generally lost in proclitics. • > "like, as" • > "to, towards" == Examples of changes ==

The following are some examples of changes between Primitive Irish and Old Irish. : == Allomorphy ==

These various changes, especially syncope, produced quite complex allomorphy, because the addition of prefixes or various pre-verbal particles (proclitics) in Proto-Celtic changed the syllable containing the stress: According to the Celtic variant of Wackernagel's law, the stress fell on the second syllable of the verbal complex, including any prefixes and clitics. By the Old Irish period, most of this allomorphy still remained, although it was rapidly eliminated beginning in the Middle Irish period. Among the most striking changes are in prefixed verbs with or without pre-verbal particles. With a single prefix and without a proclitic, stress falls on the verbal root, which assumes the deuterotonic ("second-stressed") form. With a prefix and also with a proclitic, stress falls on the prefix, and the verb assumes the prototonic ("first-stressed") form. Rather extreme allomorphic differences can result: : The following table shows how these forms might have been derived: : The most extreme allomorphy of all came from the third person singular of the -subjunctive because an athematic person marker was used, added directly onto the verbal stem (formed by adding directly onto the root). That led to a complex word-final cluster, which was deleted entirely. In the prototonic form (after two proclitics), the root was unstressed and thus the root vowel was also deleted, leaving only the first consonant: : ==See also==