Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1999, Qupperneq 180

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Flugur, smágreinar og umrœðuefni
2.3 Some comparison with Icelandic and the nature ofthe velardeletioti
As mentioned above, the velar is typically deleted in contexts of this
sort in Icelandic. Some relevant neuter forms are given in (5) (see e.g-
Indriði Gíslason and Höskuldur Þráinsson 1993):
(5) Vs&f-examples NsAf-examples Lí/ct-examples
röskt ‘energetic’ danskt ‘Danish’ ferskt ‘fresh’,fólskt ‘violent'
[rœst] [danst] [ferst, foulst]
As indicated here, Icelandic has velar deletion in all these contexts.
The velar deletion is triggered by the addition of the neuter /-t/ since
the velar is found in masculine and feminine forms like röskur, rösk,
danskur, dönsk, ferskur, fersk, fólskur, fólsk and does not show the
kind of metathesis under discussion here.
In the light of the accounts outlined above, it is not clear “why”
Icelandic would not have metathesis like Faroese.6 But it is also inte-
resting to speculate a bit about the nature of the velar deletion men-
tioned above. As we have seen, it is more general in Icelandic than it
is in Faroese, since some instances of the /skt/-cluster are “saved” by
metathesis from undergoing the velar deletion.
The so-called Articulatory Phonology developed by Browman and
Goldstein (1992) uses the notion of an articulatory gesture as a core
notion. A dynamic articulatory gesture is defined as characterizing the
formation (and release) of a constriction within the vocal tract through
movement of (a) a particular set of articulators, (b) towards a particu-
lar constriction location, (c) with a specific degree of constriction and
(d) in a characteristic, dynamically described manner. Since gestures
are spatio-temporal, they may overlap, and such gestural overlapping
is taken to be the basic for the formulation of phonetic and phonolo-
gical generalizations. Gestural overlap may result in, among other
things, assimilation or hiding of a gesture. An example of hiding was
found in an experiment run by Browman and Goldstein (1987), where
they found that /t/ in English phrases like perfect memory was ar-
ticulatorily present but not perceived and not present acoustically.
6 It should be noted, however, metathesis is in general more widespread in
the history of Faroese than it is in Icelandic, cf. forms like Far. talv, Icel. tafl
‘chess’; Far. erva, Icel. efra ‘the upper’.