Consonant mutation is change in a consonant in a word according to its morphological or syntactic environment.
Mutation occurs in languages around the world. A prototypical example of consonant mutation is the initial consonant mutation of all modern Celtic languages. Initial consonant mutation is also found in Indonesian or Malay, in Nivkh, in Southern Paiute and in several West African languages such as Fula. The Nilotic language Dholuo, spoken in Kenya, shows mutation of stem-final consonants, as does English to a small extent. Mutation of initial, medial and final consonants is found in Modern Hebrew. Also, Japanese exhibits word medial consonant mutation involving voicing, rendaku, in many compounds. Uralic languages like Finnish show consonant gradation, a type of consonant mutation.
Similar sound changes Initial consonant mutation must not be confused with sandhi, which can refer to word-initial alternations triggered by their phonological environment, unlike mutations, which are triggered by their morphosyntactic environment. Some examples of word-initial sandhi are listed below. Spanish: , occurring after nasals and pause, alternate with , occurring after vowels and liquid consonants. Example: un [b]arco 'a boat', mi [β]arco 'my boat'. This also occurs in Hebrew (as begedkefet, an acronym for the consonants this affects), Aramaic, and Tamil. Scottish Gaelic: in some dialects, stops in stressed syllables are voiced after nasals, e.g. cat 'a cat', an cat 'the cat'.
Sandhi effects like these (or other phonological processes) are usually the historical origin of morphosyntactically triggered mutation. For example, English fricative mutation (specifically, voicing) in words such as house [haus], plural houses [hauzɪz], and the verb to house [hauz] originates in an allophonic alternation of Old English, where a voiced fricative occurred between vowels (or before voiced consonants), and a voiceless one occurred initially or finally, and also when adjacent to voiceless consonants. Old English infinitives ended in -(i)an and plural nouns (of Class One nouns) ended in -as. Thus, hūs 'a house' had , and hūsian 'house (verb)' had ; however, the plural of hūs was hūs, being a neuter noun of the strong a-stem class. During the Middle English period, hous~hus, as part of the loss of gender and erosion of endings, developed plural variation, retaining hous [hu:s], the dative plural housen [hu:zən], which became extended to a general plural, and over time taking on the es plural from Old English Class 1 nouns, thus houses [hu:zəz]. After most endings were lost in English, and the contrast between voiced and voiceless fricatives partly phonemicized (largely due to the influx of French loanwords), the alternation was morphologized.
Examples
English
In Old English, velar stops were palatalized in certain cases but not others. That resulted in some alternations, many of which have been levelled, but traces occur in some word doublets such as ditch and dike .
In the past tense of certain verbs, English also retains traces of several ancient sound developments such as *kt > *xt and *ŋx > *x; many of them have been further complicated by the loss of in Middle English. seek : sought think : thought
The pair teach : taught has a combination of both this and palatalization.
A second palatalization, called yod-coalescence, occurs in loanwords from Latin. One subtype affects the sibilant consonants: earlier and were palatalized, leading to an alternation between alveolar and postalveolar . confess : confession fuse : fusion
Another unproductive layer results from the Vulgar Latin palatalization of velar stops before front vowels. It is thus imported from the Romance languages, and alternate with . induce : induction magic : magus
A combination of inherited and loaned alternation also occurs: an alternation pattern *t : *sj was brought over in Latinate loanwords, which in English was then turned into an alternation between and . act : action
Celtic languages
The Insular Celtic languages are well-known for their initial consonant mutations. The individual languages vary on the number of mutations available: Scottish Gaelic has one, Irish and Manx have two, Welsh, Cornish and Breton have four (if mixed mutations are counted). Cornish and Breton have so-called mixed mutations; a trigger causes one mutation to some sounds and another to other sounds. Welsh also has a mixed mutation (triggered by , and ). The languages vary on the environments for the mutations, but some generalizations can be made. Those languages all have feminine singular nouns mutated after the definite article, with adjectives mutated after feminine singular nouns. In most of the languages, the possessive determiners trigger various mutations. Here are some examples from Breton, Cornish, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh:
Breton Cornish Welsh Irish Scottish Gaelic Gloss gwreg gwreg gwraig bean bean 'woman'/'wife' bras bras mawr mór mòr 'big' ar wreg vras an wreg vras y wraig fawr an bhean mhór a' bhean mhòr 'the big woman' kazh kath cath cat cat 'cat' e gazh y gath ei gath a chat a chat 'his cat' he c'hazh hy hath ei chath a cat a cat 'her cat' o c'hazh aga hath eu cath a gcat an cat 'their cat'
Older textbooks on Gaelic sometimes refer to the c → ch mutation as "aspiration", but it is not aspiration in the sense of the word used by modern phoneticians, and linguists prefer to speak of lenition here.
Historically, the Celtic initial mutations originated from progressive assimilation and sandhi phenomena between adjacent words. For example, the mutating effect of the conjunction a 'and' is from the word once having the form , and the final consonant influenced the following sounds.Ternes, Elmar. 1986. A Grammatical hierarchy of joining. In: Andersen, Henning. Sandhi phenomena in the languages of Europe. P.17-18
Welsh
Welsh has three main classes of initial consonant mutation: soft mutation (); nasal mutation (); and aspirate mutation, which is sometimes called spirant mutation (). The fourth category is mixed mutation, which calls for an aspirate mutation if possible but otherwise a soft mutation. The following tables show the range of Welsh mutations with examples. A blank cell indicates that no change occurs.
Mutation scheme Examples Radical Soft Nasal Aspirate Radical Soft Nasal Aspirate English p b mh ph plant blant mhlant phlant 'children' t d nh th tref dref nhref thref 'town' tŷ dŷ nhŷ thŷ 'house' c g ngh ch coeden goeden nghoeden choeden 'tree' b f m brawd frawd mrawd 'brother' d dd n dŵr ddŵr nŵr 'water' g * ng gwaith waith by ngwaith 'work' glas las nglas 'blue' gorsaf orsaf ngorsaf 'station' m f mawr fawr 'big, large' ll l llan lan 'parish' rh r rhywbeth rywbeth 'something' ts j tsips jips 'chips' (colloquial) Soft mutation causes initial to be deleted. For example, 'garden' becomes 'the garden', and 'work' becomes 'his work'.
The mutation ts → j corresponds to the t → d mutation and reflects a change heard in modern words borrowed from English. Borrowed words like (chips) can often be heard in Wales. 'I'm going to get (some) chips'; 'I have chips'. However, the ts → j mutation is not usually included the classic list of Welsh mutations and is rarely taught in formal classes. Nevertheless, it is a part of the colloquial language and is used by native speakers.
Initial consonant mutation is often used to indicate grammatical gender of nouns in Welsh, but only in singular words. For example, 'the man' vs. 'the woman'; 'the big boy' vs. 'the big girl'. With plural words there are no mutations: 'the big boys', 'the big girls'.
Mutation can also distinguish the possessive pronouns "his" and "her", e.g. (soft mutation) 'his father' vs. (aspirate mutation) 'her father'. Again when the pronoun is plural there is no mutation: 'their (m. or f.) father'.
Mutation of consonants is found not only at the beginning of words but also internally in compounds, affecting not only the beginning of the second element but also sometimes the end of the first element, e.g. 'remember', 'forget'; "community", 'contemporary'.
h-prothesis h-prothesis is a feature in Welsh in which a vowel-initial word becomes h-initial. It occurs after the possessive pronouns 'her', 'our', and 'their': 'age', 'her age' (cf. 'his age'). It also occurs with 'twenty' after 'on' in the traditional counting system: 'twenty-one', literally 'one on twenty'.
Irish
Irish has two consonant mutations: lenition ( ) and eclipsis ( ).
Lenition Lenition () is indicated by an following the consonant in question or, in some older typefaces and texts, by an 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. → → → → → → → , → → → → → → → and become , but , , , , , and do not mutate. and are deleted.
+Examples Unmutated Lenition Gloss 'pen' 'house' 'head' 'woman' 'back' 'knee' 'mother' 'eye' 'answer'
Eclipsis The following tables show how eclipsis affects the start of words. Eclipsis is represented in the orthography by adding a letter, or occasionally two letters, to the start of the word. If the word is to be capitalised, the original first letter is capitalised, not the letter or letters added for eclipsis, e.g. the in , Ireland's national anthem.
Sound change Unmutated Eclipsis Gloss Notes → 'potato'A voiceless stop or /fˠ, fʲ/ is voiced. → 'pen' → 'tomato' → 'tongue' → 'cat' → 'head' → 'word' → 'answer' → 'milk"A voiced stop becomes a nasal. → 'woman' → 'back' → 'dinner' → 'knee' → 'gate' → 'bird'A vowel receives a preceding (before ), or (before ). → 'night'
Russian In Russian, consonant mutation and alternations are a very common phenomenon during word formation, conjugation and in comparative adjectives.
The most common classes of mutations are the alternation between velar and postalveolar consonants: → → → , as in "quiet" and "quieter" Gain or loss of palatalization: "tsar" and "of the tsar" (adjective)
Other common mutations are: → (or less frequently щ ), → → , → , → → : плеск → плещет "splash" / "(he) splashes", → : свистеть → свищу "to whistle" / "I whistle"
Hebrew Modern Hebrew shows a limited set of mutation alternations, involving spirantization only. The consonants affected may be stem-initial, stem-medial, or stem-final.
Radical Spirantized p f k x b v These alternations occur in verbs:("come" (imperative) → "you will come"),("broke" (transitive) → "broke" (intransitive),("he wrote" → "he will write"),("he remembered" → "he will remember"),("you (f.) turned" → "to turn"),("you (f.) judged" → "to judge "),or in nouns:("evening" → "twilight"),("king" → "queen"),("a thousand" → "a thousandth"), However, in Modern Hebrew, stop and fricative variants of , and are sometimes distinct phonemes: – ("applied make up" – "tipped ash"), – ("striped" – "missed"), – ("connected" – "made friends (with)"), – ("got integrated" – "was shocked"), For a more in depth discussion of this phenomenon, see Begadkefat.
Japanese Rendaku, meaning "sequential voicing", is a mutation of the initial consonant of a non-initial component in a Japanese compound word: nigiri + sushi → nigirizushi ("grip (with the hand)" + "sushi" → "hand-shaped sushi") nigori + sake → nigorizake ("muddy" + "rice wine" → "unfiltered sake")
Uralic languages
Word-medial consonant mutation is found in several Uralic languages and has the traditional name of consonant gradation. It is pervasive, especially in the Samic and Finnic branches.
Finnish