Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1999, Page 178

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Flugur, smágreinar og umrceðuefni
standa ‘stand’, skoti ‘Scot’ and the situation is the same in English, as
the glosses indicate. In the coda we can find both orders, namely [-sp,
-ps, -st, -ts, -sk, -ks], cf. examples like 0sp [œsp] ‘aspen’, taps [thaps]
‘loss (gen.)’, ræst [rast] ‘sharp’, blits [plits] ‘flash’, rpsk [jcesk] ‘good'
and laks [laks] ‘salmon’.
Thus it should be clear that the SSP can not explain the Faroese
metathesis nor be the driving force behind it in the examples under
consideration, but the special status of /s/ is worth noting
2.2 Vulnerable stops
Having studied core examples of the Faroese metathesis under
consideration, we may ask if it is possible to find a phone-
tic/phonological explanation for it. One way to seek such an ex-
planation is to look for a perceptually based account. It seems that the
phonetic cues to [s] (a very highly perceptible high frequency noise)
are much more robust than the cues to stops like [k], since stops do not
have any “sound” of their own but must rely on contextual cues such
as the frequency of the burst at their release or the formant transitions
of an adjacent vowel. It has recently been argued that factors of this
sort play a role in metathesis (see e.g. Hume 1998, Wright 1996).
If we consider the Faroese pre-metathesis sequence /skt/ from this
point of view, the /k/ (or [k]) is obviously vulnerable from a percep'
tion standpoint here since it will neither be clearly identified by hs
own burst, as it immediately precedes another stop (would probably
not even be released in this context), and it does not have any adjacent
vowel that could provide clear formant transition cues. But h°'v
would metathesis change this in examples of the sort under discussi°n
here? Fet us consider three different types, namely examples where
the /skt/-sequence is preceded by a vowel (V), a nasal (N) and a liQ'
uid (L), respectively:
(4) V^kt-examples Níkt-examples L.sLl-examples
feskt, raskt, naskt... danskt, enskt, ynskti... norskt, írskt, d0bkt
[fekst, aakst, nakst] [darjst, eqst, irjstij [nost, ust, dœlst]
In the first set of examples, it is clear that if the velar /k/ shifts its line'
ar place with the /s/ the velar will be adjacent to a vowel. Here |l