The number and nature of the consonant
phonemes in modern Icelandic is subject to broad disagreement, due to a complex relationship among consonant
allophones.
Major allophones Even the number of major allophones is subject to some dispute, although less than for phonemes. The following is a chart of potentially contrastive
phones (important phonetic distinctions which minimally contrast in some positions with known phonemes;
not a chart of actual phonemes), according to one analysis : : • are dental , whereas are alveolar, . • is an apical alveolar sibilant fricative, whereas are alveolar non-sibilant fricatives . The former is
laminal, while the latter is usually
apical. They are broadly transcribed with , which nominally denote dental fricatives. • Voiceless continuants are always constrictive . While the voiced continuants are not very constrictive and can approach approximant realizations , and may even be deleted altogether (similar to what happened in
Faroese). • The rhotic consonants may either be
trills or
taps , depending on the speaker. • Acoustic analysis reveals that the voiceless lateral approximant is realized with considerable frication, i. e. essentially as a
voiceless alveolar lateral fricative . • is pronounced as before a pause. • Word final consonants are devoiced • is sometimes realized as • includes three extra phones, namely the glottal stop , voiceless velarized alveolar lateral approximant and its voiced counterpart . • appears when an underlying is elided, e.g. . • occurs as a demarcator before stressed vowels in "empty" onsets and more rarely before utterance initial consonant in formal context where it has been qualified as "functioning as a sort of upbeat". Another source of glottal stop for some speaker is the Icelandic phonology#Debbucalisation of stops before (or
höggmæli). A large number of competing analyses have been proposed for Icelandic phonemes. The problems stem from complex but regular alternations and neutralisations among the above phones in various positions.
Alternations Examples of alternations across different positions: • :
tæp ,
tæpt • :
grafa ;
grafta ;
grafna • :
segi ,
sagt ,
sagði ,
sagna Voiced consonants are devoiced word-finally before a pause, so that
dag is pronounced ,
baðið is pronounced , and
gaf is pronounced . Even sonorants can be affected:
dagur ,
ketil .
Restrictions Dorsal consonants (velar, palatal, glottal) The glottal fricative only occurs initially before a vowel, and following a vowel in the sequences . These latter sequences are sometimes said to be unitary "
pre-aspirated" stops; see below. The voiceless velar fricative occurs only between a vowel and or , and initially as a variant of before . Because it does not contrast with in either position, it can be seen as an allophone of . However, it also alternates with , occurring before a pause where would be pronounced otherwise. There are two sets of palatal sounds. "Alternating palatals" alternate with the velars , while "non-alternating palatals" do not. Note that appears twice here; these two 's behave differently, occur in different distributions, and are denoted by different letters (
g and
j). This suggests that they may belong to different phonemes, and that is indeed a common analysis. In general, the alternating palatals are restricted to appearing before vowels. Velars are restricted to appearing everywhere except before front vowels. In other words: Before back vowels and front rounded vowels, both palatals and velars can appear; before front unrounded vowels only palatals can appear; before consonants only velars can appear. For the non-alternating palatals : Both can appear at the beginning of a word, followed by a vowel. Elsewhere, only one can occur, which must occur after a non-velar, non-palatal consonant. occurs before a vowel, and occurs in a few words at the end of a word following . The velars and alternating palatals are distributed as follows: • Initially or at beginning of syllable: Only the four stops can appear. • After that begins a syllable: only . • Between vowels: only . • After a vowel, finally or before or : only . • After a vowel, before : only . • After a vowel, before : only . • After a vowel, before nasals: only . • After a vowel, before : only . Although the facts are complex, it can be noticed that only ever contrasts with one of the two velar stops, never with both, and hence can be taken as an allophone of whichever one doesn't appear in a given context. Alternatively, following the orthography, can be taken as an allophone of , where is taken as an allophone of either or depending on context, following the orthography.
Alveolar non-sibilant fricatives In native vocabulary, the fricatives and are allophones of a single phoneme . is used morpheme-initially, as in
þak , and when devoiced, such as neaby an aspirated plosive (in Southern accents), e.g. in
maðkur . is used elsewhere: intervocalically as in
iða or word-finally, as in
bað , although it is devoiced before a pause. Some
loanwords (mostly from
Classical Greek) have introduced the phone in intervocalic environments, as in
Aþena . The phone is a
laminal voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative . The corresponding voiced phone is similar, but is
apical rather than laminal .
Voiceless sonorants Of the voiceless sonorants , only the coronal occur in word-initial position, for example in
hné ('knee'). Between a consonant and a pause, adjacent to fortis obstruents, only the voiceless sonorants appear; elsewhere, only the voiced sonorants appear (exepted in the ambivalent sequence ). This makes it clear that are non-phonemic. Initial voiceless sonorants are often pronounced with a fully voiced offset, with the onset closer to being whispery voiced. are also often fricated (almost systematically for non initial ) Recently, there has been an increasing tendency, especially among children, to pronounce initial
hn as voiced, e.g.
hnífur ('knife') rather than standard as unmerged has the longest period of voicedness and not access to frication to enhance contrast.
Palatal and velar nasals The
palatal nasals appear before palatal stops and the
velar nasals before
velar stops; in these positions, the
alveolar nasals do not occur. appears also before , and through the deletion of in the
consonant clusters , and through the coalescence of the consonants and in the consonant clusters . The palatal nasals are clearly non-phonemic, although there is some debate about due to the common deletion and coalescence of .
Aspiration and length contrasts (medial and final) Modern Icelandic is often said to have a rare kind of stops, the so-called
pre-aspirated stops (e.g.
löpp 'foot'), which occur only after a vowel and do not contrast with sequences (which do not occur in Icelandic). note that phonetically, in Icelandic pre-aspirated stops the aspiration is longer than in normal post-aspirated stops, and is indistinguishable from sequences (or with replacing ) occurring in other languages; hence, they prefer to analyze the pre-aspirated stops as sequences. As a result Icelandic are cognates with German (although this easily breaks: -, -, -, -). This is because in old Norse, inherited sequences of *
h + *
p, t, k merged with geminates (and lengthened the preceding vowel). Following vowels there is a complex alternation among consonant length, vowel length and aspiration. The following table shows the alternations in medial and final position : : In most analyses, consonant length is seen as phonemic while vowel length is seen as determined entirely by environment, with long vowels occurring in stressed syllables before single consonants and before certain sequences formed of a consonant plus , and short vowels occurring elsewhere. Note that diphthongs also occur long and short.
Phonemes As discussed above, the phones , probably , and debatably are non-phonemic. Beyond this, there is a great deal of debate both about the number and identity of the phonemes in Icelandic and the mapping between phonemes and allophones. There are a number of different approaches: Phonetic vs. orthographic: • The "phonetic" approach. This approach tries to stay as close as possible to the phonetics. This would assume, for example, that and should be consistently analyzed in all contexts as phonemic and , respectively (or perhaps as an
archiphoneme in positions where the two do not contrast), and that is a phonemic sequence (or possibly a unitary
pre-aspirated ). • The "orthographic" approach (e.g. ). This approach takes the
orthography (i.e. the spelling) as approximately indicative of the underlying phonemes. This approach generally assumes, for example, phonemes and which occur in accordance with the orthography (i.e. where written
k, where written
g), where has allophones , and depending on the context, and has allophones , and . is analyzed as or , while is analyzed as , again consistent with the orthography. A variant would assume that and merge into an
archiphoneme in contexts where the two cannot be distinguished, e.g. before or , where both would be pronounced . Note that in this approach, a particular phone will often be an allophone of different phonemes depending on context; e.g. would be taken as initially, but between vowels. Maximalist vs. minimalist: • The "maximalist" approach. This approach generally takes the contrasting phones as unit phonemes unless there is a good reason not to. This would assume, for example, that the palatal stops , voiceless sonorants and perhaps the velar nasal are separate phonemes, at least in positions where they cannot be analyzed as allophones of other unitary phonemes (e.g. initially for the voiceless sonorants, before and for the velar nasal). • The "minimalist" approach. This approach analyzes phones as clusters whenever possible, in order to reduce the number of phonemes and (in some cases) better account for alternations. This would assume, for example, that the palatal stops, voiceless sonorants and velar nasal are phonemic clusters, in accordance with the orthography. In
structuralist analyses, which passed out of vogue starting in the 1960s as
generative approaches took off, even more extreme minimalist approaches were common. An example is . Although he presents more than one analysis, the most minimal analysis not only accepts all the clusters indicated in the orthography, but also analyzes the aspirates as sequences , , (or , , depending on how the non-aspirate stops are analyzed) and reduces all vowels and diphthongs down to a set of 6 vowels. The main advantage of the phonetic approach is its simplicity compared with the orthographic approach. A major disadvantage, however, is that it results in a large number of unexplained lexical and grammatical alternations. Under the orthographic approach, for example (especially if a minimalist approach is also adopted), all words with the root
sag-/seg- ('say') have a phonemic , despite the varying phones occurring in different lexical and inflectional forms, and similarly all words with the root
sak- ('blame') have a phonemic , despite the varying phones . Under the phonetic approach, however, the phonemes would vary depending on the context in complicated and seemingly arbitrary ways. Similarly, an orthographic analysis of three words for "white",
hvítur hvít hvítt ( sg, sg, ) as allows for a simple analysis of the forms as a root plus endings and successfully explains the surface alternation , which would not be possible in a strictly phonetic approach. Assuming a basically orthographic approach, the set of phonemes in Icelandic is as follows: : The parentheses indicate
phonemes present in a maximalist analysis but not a minimalist analysis. There is a particular amount of debate over the status of and . A maximalist analysis sees them as separate phonemes (e.g. and , respectively), while in a minimalist analysis they are
allophones of and before front unrounded vowels, and of the sequences and before rounded vowels, in accordance with the orthography. The maximalist approach accords with the presence of
minimal pairs like
gjóla ('light wind') vs.
góla ('howl') and
kjóla ('dresses') vs.
kóla ('cola'), along with general speakers' intuitions. However, the minimalist approach (e.g. ) accounts for some otherwise unexplained gaps in the system (e.g. the absence of palatal/velar contrasts except before rounded vowels, and the absence of phonetic after velars and palatals), as well as otherwise unexplained alternations between palatals and velars in e.g.
segi ('[I] say') vs.
sagði ('[I] said'; assuming that and are taken as allophones of palatal and velar stops, respectively). On the other hand, the number of such alternations is not as great as for stop vs. fricative alternations; most lexical items consistently have either velars or palatals. The voiceless sonorants are straightforwardly taken as allophones of voiced sonorants in most positions, because of lack of any contrast; similarly for vs. . On the other hand, do contrast with in initial position, suggesting that they may be phonemes in this position, consistent with a maximalist analysis. A minimalist analysis, however, would note the restricted distribution of these phonemes, the lack of contrast in this position with sequences and the fact that similar sequences do occur, and analyze as , in accordance with the orthography. The velar nasal is clearly an allophone of before a velar stop. When it occurs before or as a result of deletion of an intervening , however, some scholars analyze it as a phoneme , while others analyze it as a sequence, e.g. .
Aspiration In the standard dialect, the voiceless plosive phonemes
p t k are normally postaspirated as if they occur at the beginning of a morpheme, but are never postaspirated in the non-initial position within a morpheme and are instead pronounced . In particular, this makes the consonant pairs
p/b and
t/d homophones between vowels within a morpheme, though
b and
d tend not to occur in this position in Icelandic words inherited from Old Norse anyway. The aspiration does not always completely disappear, though: • Geminated sequences
pp tt kk within a morpheme become preaspirated . • Any of the sequences
pn pl tn tl kn kl after a vowel within a morpheme become preaspirated . • In the sequences
mp nt nk rk rp rt lp lt lk ðk within a morpheme, the second consonant is not postaspirated, but the first consonant becomes voiceless as another form of preaspiration, resulting in . But many of the dialects of
northern Iceland, especially in the
Eyjafjörður and
Þingeyjarsýsla regions, may retain postaspiration of
p t k as between vowels. Among Iceland's dialects, this feature is the most common surviving deviation from the standard dialect. Furthermore, in Þingeyjarsýsla and northeast Iceland, the sequences
mp nt nk lp lk ðk within a morpheme before a vowel may retain a voiced pronunciation of their first consonant and a postaspirated pronunciation of their second consonant, resulting in . This does not affect the sequences
rp rt rk lt within a morpheme, which all dialects pronounce like the standard dialect.
Pre-sonorant phenomena Velarisation If an alveolar sonorant is in cluster with an elided , it becomes velarised. For example, this creates the (near) minimal pairs: – and – . For , this outputs the following: – . As displayed, the process introduces a new surface phone and reintroduces (although not systematically) "thin vowels" before . The velarisation does not cross word boundary though, as with many icelandic phenomena. is pronounced either as or .
Debbucalisation of stops Lenis stops () can be all debuccalised to a glottal stop () when in coda position, preceding the sonorants or . This phenomenon is referred to . Examples: for , for . ==Vowels==