intervocalic DEvoicing can also happen / X > Y > X

[Alan R. King]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
 
>Apparently, new geminates -tt- arose from syncope, giving -d-
>(cadair) and -tt- (eto /etto/) as the only allowed intervocalic
>stops.
 
I accept the correction.  I was writing from memory, without the relevant
manuals to hand.  But I don't think this affects the gist of my argument.
 
>But that would put the /katar/ varieties of Welsh above Cornish and
>Breton in the branching tree, which doesn't seem very likely.
 
I think it's pretty obvious that /kadar/ > /katar/ is an innovation, not a
survival.  I was merely saying that it has to be one or the other (and is,
in fact, the one, not the other).
 
>What's missing in the above is a variety of Welsh that has eliminated
>geminates: D, d, T, t.  One would expect one.
 
I'll say what I know (or think I know) about this.  As I said before,
except in certain cases (e.g. "canu" versus "cannu"), it is predictable in
modern Welsh whether a given intervocalic consonant preceded by a stressed
vowel will be geminate or simple, and in the case of stops, the standard
rule is voiced -> simple, and voiceless -> geminate.  So I think it can be
argued that gemination may not be phonemic, except for those "certain
cases".  Thus [t] and [tt] would be allophones of /t/, etc.  Given that
situation, the issue seems to belong to the domain of surface phonetics.
 
The difference between southern and northern dialects in this respect would
then be that in the south only voiceless stop phonemes have the two
allophones (simple and geminate) while in the north this pattern has been
extended to include voiced stops.
 
SOUTH (more conservative in this respect):
/t/  ->  [t], [tt]
/d/  ->  [d]
 
NORTH:
/t/  ->  [t], [tt]
/d/  ->  [d], [dd]
 
hence e.g. southern [etto], [ka:der] vs. northern [etto], [kaddar] for
/eto/, /kadVr/.
 
Not being a phonetician nor a native Welsh speaker (but I do speak Welsh),
my IMPRESSION from contact with speakers of different varieties of Welsh,
and reading on the subject, is that:
 
in the NORTHERN dialects, the acoustic effect of both the gemination of the
stops and the shortening of the preceding stressed vowels is very striking
and "vigorous".  At least in many speakers, in a word like /kadar/, the
intervocalic consonant seems to "last" considerably longer than the
preceding stressed vowel (sic!), which sounds "clipped" to my foreign ear.
For the stop to "last" that long, I believe the flow of breath must be
interrupted completely in the middle, and that is what it sounds like:
[kad] (pause) [dar], probably more accurately [kat] (pause) [tar], with no
aspiration.  (In my experience, speakers from the Iberian peninsula who
learn Welsh tend to identify this as [katar].)
 
in the SOUTHERN dialects, where gemination affects a smaller range of
consonants, my general impression is that the distinction is maintained but
in a phonetically more low-key manner, and since the distinction is
phonetic rather than phonemic, my guess is that there is probably
considerable variation in how these consonants are realized.  On the other
hand, for the southern dialects, the distinction, while not phonemic,
retains *phonological* significance in that it correlates with a length
contrast in the preceding vowel ([ka:der] versus [et(t)o]), and the vowel
length distinction *is* observed (very noticeably if you're more used to
hearing northern Welsh).  Thus while the simple/geminate contrast is not by
itself distinctive in most cases (it not only correlates with length of the
adjacent vowel but is furthermore itself usually predictable from other
features, such as voice), the fact that it does correlate with (clearly
perceptible) vowel quantity probably helps to reinforce the speaker's
*competence* regarding consonant length, even if structurally superfluous.
 
Then there are the cases where consonant gemination remains phonemic in
southern Welsh, e.g. /ka:ni/ 'sing' versus /kanni/ 'whiten'
(orthographically, "canu" and "cannu", and both  /kannI/ in northern
Welsh).  It would be interesting to know whether some southern dialects
actually confuse such pairs, but this seems unlikely because the vowel
"helps", even if the gemination contrast is weakened.  In any case, I have
not read or heard of southern dialects in which the gemination contrast is
lost completely, both phonologically and phonetically.
 
Alan