Morphophonological Lenition in Old Irish |
|
Krzysztof Jaskuła (Catholic University of Lublin) |
As a
result of consonant mutations occurring in Old Irish, different variants of
lexical items surfaced, depending on the grammatical context. The most
conspicuous mutation was lenition, which affected a greater number of segments
than the other process called nasalization. A close inspection of lenition
indicates that its nature was not solely phonological since the contexts
triggering consonant alternations had disappeared long before the time when Old
Irish was spoken. Thus, in this phonological system lenition had only
grammatical functions to perform and its original causes were obscured by
morphophonological processes taking place between the time of phonological
lenition and the period of Old Irish. The purely phonological aspect of
lenition can be detected only after studying prehistoric sound changes and
morphological developments which led to the creation of the system of Old
Irish.
An
analysis of ancient data reveals that the distinction into leniting and
leniting contexts in Old Irish is purely formal and functional. This claim can
be supported by the fact that when lenition was phonological, there was no possibility
of weakening a segment without a phonological context. Similarly, every
consonant was affected by this mutation if the trigger was present. This was no
longer the case in Old Irish. Moreover, both these environments could
ultimately produce identical results, depending on subsequent morphophonological
developments.
The
paper also addresses the question of how much phonology remained in the Old
Irish system given the lexicalization of mutations on the one hand and the
relatively stable shape of both unlenited and lenited versions of consonants on
the other.