Consonant gradation
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Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, found in some Finno-Lappic languages, such as Finnish and Sami; particularly Votic has an extensive set of gradation patterns. Consonant gradation is used to maintain vocal harmony in the language.
In Finnish, only the plosives — Finnish plosives being /ptk/ and /ppttkk/ — appearing as the onset of the last syllable in a stem are affected by the gradation. The nominative of the noun, and the first infinitive stem (without the I infinitive ending -ta or -da) are most often of the "strong" grade. When the word is declined, the last consonant in the stem changes to its "weak" grade, and the inflectional ending is added. In archiphonemic terms, the mutation is lenition; with geminates, the loss of gemination, with simple consonants, lenition into an archiphonemic fricative:
- pp → p
- kk → k
- tt → t
- p → *β (v, chroneme)
- t → *θ (d, s, chroneme; note: 'd' is realized differently in each dialect, see Finnish phonology)
- k → *γ (disappearance, j, chroneme)
The complete list may be seen here: [1]
The symbols *β, *θ, *γ are phonetic coefficients with no single phonemic value, realized according to their phonetic environment. They can be thought as something that plays the role of bilabial, dental and velar fricatives, which are not found in modern Finnish. Finnish used to have them, and has lost them relatively recently. For example, the voiced velar fricative explains the disappearance of 'k', as in parkua → paruttiin. Since the phonetic environment controls the realization, the number of actual patterns is large. Often assimilation produces a geminate, e.g. lampi → *lamβən → lammen (where ə represents vowel epenthesis). Without the historical perspective, this phoneme be analyzed as a chroneme, a consonant exhibited as a lengthening of the previous consonant.
The most common realizations are:
- 'p' changes to 'v', puku ~ puvun
- 't' changes to 'd', täti ~ tädin
- 'k' elides, keko ~ keon
The process is grammatical, and it works always such that the "root" word is the strong form. This creates the difficulty of identifying the original root, because Finnish often derives words, applying gradation in the process. For example, hake "wood chippings" gradates to hakkee-, not to *hae-, because it is already a gradated form of hakkaa- < "hack" (whose infinitive is the weak grade haka|ta). However, hake|a "to get, to search" does gradate to hae-, as hake- is the original form.
In loans, geminate voiced plosives (bb, dd, gg) behave much like their unvoiced counterparts, e.g. diggaa- → digata "to dig (music)".
K is the phoneme with the most possible changes. Using the change from the nominative to the genitive case as an example:
- It can completely disappear (jalka : jalan)
- Double (liike : liikkeen)
- The uku/yky pattern can change to uvu/yvy (puku : puvun)
- The lki pattern can change to lje (kylki : kyljen)
- The rki pattern can change to rje (järki : järjen)
- The nk /ŋk/ pattern can change to ng /ŋŋ/ (Helsinki /helsiŋki/ : Helsingin /helsiŋŋin/); notice that there is no /ɡ/ or /g/ here
Changes for t include t : d (tietää : tiedän), rt : rr (kertoa : kerron), lt : ll (pelto : pellon), and nt ~ nn (antaa ~ annan). The last three forms are due to assimilation, rather than the consonant gradation itself. Changes for p include p : v (tapa : tavan) and mp : mm (lampi : lammen), where the latter is again caused by assimilation and not by consonant gradation itself. The quantitative consonant gradation, ie. kk : k, pp : p, tt : t, gg : g, dd : d and bb : b affects all geminates, and single consonants in inverse consonant gradation position.
Note: the change in vowels (e.g. Suomi ~ Suomen) is not considered consonant gradation. (The ending -i is paragoge; it is elided, and then an epenthetic vowel -e- is added, to produce a stem where to attach consonantal case endings.)