Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1984, Blaðsíða 151

Model ofModern Icelandic Syllable Types 149
(or could) be glottalization and thus the loss of supralaryngeal features
should result in a glottal stop. (It might even be suggested that glottal-
ization has a sort of archiphonemic status in the environment in ques-
tion.)
If a hierarchy of the sort represented in Diagram 1 is assumed,
a corollary will be (as mentioned above) a classification of syllabic
nuclei into ‘natural classes’, the plausibility or implausibility of which
could be evaluated against potential evidence. The hierarchy suggest-
ed here would make the most basic classification of Icelandic syllable
types (types of nucleus). the one between syllables with held voicing
and ones with checked voicing. It is thus not a coincidence, but one
of the basic characteristics of Modern Icelandic phonology, that it
has ‘preaspiration’ and voiceless laterals, nasals and trills before stops
in forms like hattur [hah^Yr], elta [e[$a], vænta [vain^a], varta [vaj$a].
The coexistence of these forms may be seen as a ‘consequence’ of
the fact that syllabic nuclei can have checked voicing without concom-
itant complete closure of the vocal tract.
Loanwords, neologisms and Icelandic speakers’ pronunciation of
foreign words may be mentioned in this context. English words like
stop, milk and work tend to be pronounced [stohþ], [mijg] and [vœjg]
by speakers with a heavy Icelandic accent on their English (cf. Thrá-
insson 1978). The nuclei of these forms could all be seen as falling
in the category of checked voicing (and a non-closed manner), which
is a basic class in the phonological system of Modern Icelandic accor-
ding to the suggestion made here. The fact that the forms mentioned
can be categorized in this way may be taken as a sign that the category
is natural in the language. It is a different matter why the forms in
question fall in this category and why for example stop does not get
a form [sto^:], i.e. fall in the same category as e.g. grobb [groþ:],
‘bragging’, or why milk and work do not get pronounced [mllg] and
[vœrg], i.e. in the same way as volg [volg] ‘warm’ and varg [varg]
‘shrew’ with held nuclei. This might be due to influence from spelling,
particularly in the case of milk and work, since the normal Icelandic
spelling for the voiceless forms is Ik, rk etc. The explanation of the
behaviour of the form stop in terms of spelling is more far-fetched,
but not inconceivable. The preaspirated forms are spelled in Icelandic
with double pp, tt, and kk: hopp [hohþ], satt [sah$] etc., so if spelling
is active here, it must be assumed that the fact that the Icelandic