Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- List of tables
- List of figures
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 0 General introduction
- Part I Phonology
- 1 Introduction to Phonology
- 2 The syllabic system
- 3 The vowels
- 4 The semi-vowel and consonant systems
- Part II Morphology
- Part III Syntax
- Glossary
- References
- Index of Irish words
2 - The syllabic system
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- List of tables
- List of figures
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 0 General introduction
- Part I Phonology
- 1 Introduction to Phonology
- 2 The syllabic system
- 3 The vowels
- 4 The semi-vowel and consonant systems
- Part II Morphology
- Part III Syntax
- Glossary
- References
- Index of Irish words
Summary
Many phonological rules discussed in Part I in effect alter the form of a syllable by increasing or decreasing it or by altering it in other ways, e.g.
(1) gorm ‘blue’ /gorm/ → /gorəm/
bóthar ‘road’ /boːhər/ → /boːr/ (Cf)
am ‘time’ /am/ → /aːm/ (→ /aːm/) (Cn)
It will be necessary to distinguish here between those phonological rules which are relatively superficial, applying often only in particular dialects, and those which are more fundamental and which affect the basic system.
Basic form of syllable
It is possible to predict certain relationships between particular vowels and their surrounding consonants and to note their distribution in disyllabic words (see Ó Siadhail and Wigger 1975:68-71); some such information will emerge in the discussion of the phonological rules concerning vowels.
A further contribution to the so-called ‘canonical form’ of the syllable is made by describing the permitted initial and final consonant clusters. The first consonant cluster in a word such as spleách ‘dependent’ gives us an example of the longest possible cluster in Irish. There is a maximum of three consonants in initial position (i.e. /s(′)/, /p(′)/, /I(′)/). The group at the end of a word such as bocht ‘poor’, which contains two consonants /x/ and /t/, illustrates the maximal cluster permitted in final positions.
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- Information
- Modern IrishGrammatical Structure and Dialectal Variation, pp. 19 - 34Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989