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A Scottish Gaelic example would be the lack of lenition in am fear /əm fɛr/ ("the man") and lenition in a' bhean /ə vɛn/ ("the woman"). The following examples show the development of a phrase consisting of a definite article plus a masculine noun (taking the ending -os ) compared with a feminine noun taking the ending -a .
Lenition and slenderisation (also referred to as palatalisation or "i-infection") play a crucial role in Scottish Gaelic grammar. [2]Lenition (sometimes inaccurately referred to as "aspiration"), as a grammatical process, affects the pronunciation of initial consonants, and is indicated orthographically by the addition of an h :
^† Lenition of initial l n r is not shown in writing. Word initially, these are always assumed to have the strong values (/(l̪ˠ) ʎ n̪ˠ ɲ rˠ/) unless they are in a leniting environment or unless they belong to a small and clearly defined group of particle (mostly the forms of the prepositions ri and le).
Irish, like Scottish Gaelic and Manx, features two initial consonant mutations: lenition (Irish: séimhiú [ˈʃeːvʲuː]) and eclipsis (urú [ˈʊɾˠuː]) (the alternative names, aspiration for lenition and nasalisation for eclipsis, are also used, but those terms are misleading).
Lenition (séimhiú) is indicated by an h following the consonant in question or, in some older typefaces and texts, by a overdot ( ̇ ) above the letter that has undergone lenition. The effects of lenition are as follows: A stop becomes a fricative. Voicing is retained, as is place of articulation except for the coronals. /pˠ/ → /fˠ/
In Irish and Scottish Gaelic, th represents the lenition of t . In most cases word-initially, it is pronounced /h/. For example: Irish and Scottish Gaelic toil [tɛlʲ] 'will' → do thoil [də hɛlʲ] 'your will'. This use of digraphs with h to indicate lenition is
The name comes from the Scottish Gaelic sgian-dubh, from sgian ('knife') and dubh ('black', also with the secondary meaning of 'hidden'. [2]). Although sgian is feminine, so that a modern Gael might refer to a black knife as sgian dhubh, the term for the ceremonial knife is a set-phrase containing a historical form with blocked lenition.
The most obvious phonological difference between Irish and Scottish Gaelic is that the phenomenon of eclipsis in Irish is diachronic (i.e. the result of a historical word-final nasal that may or may not be present in modern Irish) but fully synchronic in Scottish Gaelic (i.e. it requires the actual presence of a word-final nasal except for a tiny set of frozen forms).