Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.06.1970, Page 464

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The complicated problems associated with /r/, which are
in some respects related to those treated here, are disregarded.
1. Distributional Survey
Before proceeding to the discussion of alternations it may
be advantageous to take stock of the stops, fricatives, and
semivowels occurring in diíferent positions (only facts relevant
to the present study will be mentioned here).
It is useful to distinguish between two types of position:
strong and weak position (cp. Jakobson-Fant-Halle 1961:
5). These will here be taken as essentially synonymous with
(syllable-)initial and (syllable-)final position, but they cannot
be directly characterized in these terms without a discussion
of the concept of syllable, which is outside the scope of this
paper. Instead, the following working definition referring to
morphophonemic environments may suífice:
A consonant is in strong position if it fulfils the following
two requirements: (1) it is preceded by juncture (morpheme
border) or by a segment that is (phonemically) voiced; (2) it
is followed by a full vowel (i.e., not shwa) with or without an
intervening voiced consonant but without an intervening
juncture. Examples are: [g] in [gli:ða] ‘glide’, [b, g] in
[lom'bæ^go] ‘lumbago’.
Otherwise a consonant is in weak position. Examples are:
[y, ð] in [to:y3ða] ‘foggy’ (plur.), [ð, g] in [jo:ðisg] ‘jewish’
(the latter word has a morpheme border between [ð] and [i]),
and [ð] in [feðma] ‘fatness’.
In strong position there are maximally ten contrasting
obstruents (disregarding [h], which is not considered an
obstruent here): aspirated [p, t, k], unaspirated (and voice-
less) [b, d, g], voiceless [f, s, (J)] (J can be considered as s+j),
and voiced [v,j]. It has been suggested (most recently by
Hamp) that [p, t, k,f, s] should be defined as tense (this feature
may be redundant in [s] according to Hamp), the others as lax.
Aspiration and voice are then phonetic features introduced
by manifestation rules. In the present paper it is assumed