Consonant mutation is change in a

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...

in a

word A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...

according to its morphological or

syntactic In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency) ...

environment. Mutation occurs in languages around the world. A prototypical example of consonant mutation is the initial consonant mutation of all modern

Celtic languages The Celtic languages (usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...

. Initial consonant mutation is also found in Indonesian or Malay, in Nivkh, in

Southern Paiute The Southern Paiute people are a tribe of Native Americans who have lived in the Colorado River basin of southern Nevada, northern Arizona, and southern Utah. Bands of Southern Paiute live in scattered locations throughout this territory and ha ...

and in several West African languages such as Fula. The Nilotic language

Dholuo The Dholuo dialect (pronounced ) or ''Nilotic Kavirondo'', is a dialect of the Luo group of Nilotic languages, spoken by about 4.2 million Luo people of Kenya and Tanzania, who occupy parts of the eastern shore of Lake Victoria and areas to th ...

, spoken in

Kenya ) , national_anthem = " Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

, shows mutation of stem-final consonants, as does

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

to a small extent. Mutation of initial, medial and final consonants is found in

Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...

. Also, Japanese exhibits word medial consonant mutation involving voicing, ''

rendaku is a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology that governs the voicing of the initial consonant of a non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word. In modern Japanese, ''rendaku'' is common but at times unpredictable, with certain words un ...

'', in many compounds.

Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian ...

like Finnish show consonant gradation, a type of consonant mutation.

Similar sound changes

Initial consonant mutation must not be confused with

sandhi Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...

, which can refer to word-initial alternations triggered by their

phonological Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

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

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...

s and

liquid consonant In phonetics, liquids are a class of consonants consisting of voiced lateral approximants like together with rhotics like . Etymology The grammarian Dionysius Thrax used the Ancient Greek word (, ) to describe the sonorant consonants () of cl ...

s. Example: un ''brco 'a boat', mi ''βrco 'my boat'. This also occurs in

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

(as begedkefet, an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for the consonants this affects),

Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...

, and

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...

. *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'' aus plural ''houses'' auzɪzand ''house'' (verb) auzoriginates in an

allophonic In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ' ...

alternation of

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

, 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'' u:s the dative plural ''housen'' u:zən which became extended to a general plural, and over time taking on the ''es'' plural from Old English Class 1 nouns, thus ''houses'' u: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 French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

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 the Middle English. * ''seek'' : ''sought'' * ''think'' : ''thought'' The pair ''teach'' : ''taught'' has a combination of both this and palatalization. A second palatalization, called

yod-coalescence The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters. H-cluster reductions The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, inv ...

, occurs in loanwords from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

. 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

are well-known for their initial consonant mutations. The individual languages vary on the number of mutations available:

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...

has one, Irish and Manx have two,

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...

, 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 ''na'', ''ni'' and ''oni''). 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 determiner Possessive determiners (from la, possessivus, translit=; grc, κτητικός / ktētikós - en. ktetic Lallu) are determiners which express possession. Some traditional grammars of English refer to them as possessive adjectives, though they d ...

s trigger various mutations. Here are some examples from Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh: 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 In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language at a pa ...

here. Historically, the Celtic initial mutations originated from progressive assimilation and

phenomena between adjacent words. For example, the mutating effect of the conjunction ''a'' 'and' is from the word once having the form *ak, and the final consonant influenced the following sounds.

Welsh

has three main classes of initial consonant mutation: ''soft mutation'' ( cy, treiglad meddal); ''nasal mutation'' ( cy, treiglad trwynol); and ''aspirate mutation'', which is sometimes called ''spirant mutation'' ( cy, treiglad llaes). The fourth category is ''mixed mutation'', which calls for a ''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. : *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.

= ''h''-prothesis

= h-''prothesis'' is a phenomenon in Welsh in which a vowel-initial word becomes ''h''-initial. It occurs after the possessive pronouns 'her', 'our', and 'their': 'age', 'her age' (c.f. '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: ''

'' ( �ʃeː.vʲuː and ''eclipsis'' ( �ʊ.ɾˠuː.

= Lenition

= Lenition () is indicated by an h following the consonant in question or, in some older typefaces and texts, by a dot (◌̇) 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. #* → #* → #* → #* → #* → #* → #* → , #* → #* → #* → #* → #* → # becomes or ; becomes . # and become , but , , , , , and do not mutate. # and are deleted.

= Eclipsis

= The following tables show how eclipsis affects the start of words. Eclipsis is symbolised 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. An example is the "F" in Ireland's national anthem, ''Amhrán na bhFiann''.

Russian

In Russian, consonant mutation and alternations are a very common phenomenon during word formation,

conjugation Conjugation or conjugate may refer to: Linguistics *Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form * Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language Mathematics *Complex conjugation, the change ...

and in

comparative adjective Comparison is a feature in the morphology or syntax of some languages whereby adjectives and adverbs are inflected to indicate the relative degree of the property they define exhibited by the word or phrase they modify or describe. In language ...

s. The most common classes of mutations are the alternation between

velar Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the velum). Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive a ...

and

postalveolar consonant Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but n ...

s: * → * → * → , as in "quiet" and "quieter" *Gain or loss of palatalization: "

tsar Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East and South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" in the European medieval sense of the ter ...

" 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

shows a limited set of mutation alternations, involving spirantization only. The consonants affected may be stem-initial, stem-medial, or stem-final. However, in Modern Hebrew, stop and fricative variants of , and are sometimes distinct phonemes: For a more in depth discussion of this phenomenon, see

Begadkefat Begadkefat (also begedkefet) is the name given to a phenomenon of lenition affecting the non- emphatic stop consonants of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic when they are preceded by a vowel and not geminated. The name is also given to similar cases of ...

Japanese

Rendaku is a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology that governs the voicing of the initial consonant of a non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word. In modern Japanese, ''rendaku'' is common but at times unpredictable, with certain words un ...

, 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 is a Japanese dish of prepared , usually with some sugar and salt, accompanied by a variety of , such as seafood, often raw, and vegetables. Styles of sushi and its presentation vary widely, but the one key ingredient is "sushi rice," also ...

") * nigori + sake → nigorizake ("muddy" + "rice wine" → "unfiltered

sake Sake, also spelled saké ( ; also referred to as Japanese rice wine), is an alcoholic beverage of Japanese origin made by fermenting rice that has been polished to remove the bran. Despite the name ''Japanese rice wine'', sake, and in ...

Uralic languages

Word-medial consonant mutation is found in several

and has the traditional name of consonant gradation. It is pervasive, especially in the Samic and Finnic branches.

Finnish

Consonant gradation involves an alternation in consonants between a strong grade in some forms of a word and a weak grade in others. The strong grade usually appears in the nominative singular of nominals and the infinitive of verbs. The consonants subject to graduation are the plosives (''p'', ''t'', ''k'') before a vowel, sonorants (''m'', ''n'', ''l'', ''r''), and ''h''. Plosives that are preceded by any other obstruent or followed by any consonant do not undergo gradation. The gradation of loanwords may include new gradation patterns that are not native to Finnish:

Burmese

Burmese exhibits consonant mutation, involving voicing in many compound words. The primary type of consonant mutation is that if two syllables are joined to form a

compound word In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when ...

, the initial consonant of the second syllable becomes voiced. The shift occurs in these phones: * → * → * → * → * → * → Examples: : () + () > ("medicine" + "room" → "clinic") The second type of consonant mutation occurs when the phoneme after the nasalized final becomes a sound in compound words. Examples: :"blouse" ( ''angkyi'') can be pronounced or . The third type of consonant mutation occurs when phonemes , after the nasalized final , become in compound words: : () + () > () ("to consult") : () + () > ("to apologize") : () + () > ("airplane")

Southern Oceanic languages

Mutation of the initial consonant of verbs is a feature of several languages in the Southern Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family.

Central Vanuatu

Initial consonant mutation occurs in many Central Vanuatu languages like

Raga A ''raga'' or ''raag'' (; also ''raaga'' or ''ragam''; ) is a melodic framework for improvisation in Indian classical music akin to a melodic mode. The ''rāga'' is a unique and central feature of the classical Indian music tradition, and as ...

: : ''nan vano'' "I went" : ''nam bano'' "I go" Those patterns of mutations probably arose when a nasal prefix, indicating the

realis mood A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mo ...

, became combined with the verb's initial consonant. The possible ancestral pattern of mutation and its descendants in some modern Central Vanuatu languages are shown below:

New Caledonia

Initial consonant mutation also serves a grammatical purpose in some New Caledonian languages. For example, Iaai uses initial consonant mutation in verbs to distinguish between specific/

definite In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical ...

objects and generic/indefinite objects: Those forms likely derive from an earlier

reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...

of the first syllable in which the interconsonantal vowel was deleted, resulting in a spirantization of the formerly reduplicated consonant.

Dholuo

The Dholuo language (one of the Luo languages) shows alternations between voiced and voiceless states of the final consonant of a noun stem. In the

construct state In Afro-Asiatic languages, the first noun in a genitive phrase of a possessed noun followed by a possessor noun often takes on a special morphological form, which is termed the construct state (Latin ''status constructus''). For example, in Arabi ...

(the form that means 'hill of', 'stick of', etc.) the voicing of the final consonant is switched from the absolute state. (There are also often vowel alternations that are independent of consonant mutation.) * 'hill' (abs.), god (const.) * 'stick' (abs.), luð (const.) * 'appearance' (abs.), kit (const.) * 'bone' (abs.), (const.) *buk 'book' (abs.), bug (const.) * 'book' (abs.), (const.)

Fula

Consonant mutation is a prominent feature of the

Fula language Fula ,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh also known as Fulani or Fulah (, , ; Adlam: , , ), is a Senegambian language spoken by around 30 million people as a set of various dialects in a continuum that st ...

. The Gombe dialect spoken in

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

, for example, shows mutation triggered by

declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ...

class. The mutation grades are fortition and prenasalization: For example, the stems rim- 'free man' and 'person' have the following forms: * (class 2), dimo (class 1), ndimon (class 6) * (class 2), gimɗo (class 1), ŋgimkon (class 6)

Indonesian and Malay

The active form of a multisyllabic verb with an initial

stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), li ...

fricative consonant A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...

is formed by prefixing the verb stem with ''meN-'' in which ''N'' stands for a

nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...

sharing the same place of articulation as the initial consonant: *garuk → menggaruk (= to scratch), hitung → menghitung (= to count), *beri → memberi (= to give), fitnah → memfitnah (= to accuse falsely), *cari → mencari (= to search), dapat → mendapat (= to obtain), *jangkau → menjangkau (= to reach) An initial consonant that is an unvoiced stop or ''s'' is deleted, leaving only the nasal in its place. *kandung → mengandung (= to contain or to be pregnant), *putih → memutih (= to turn white), *satu → menyatu (= to become one / to unite), *tulis → menulis (= to write). Applied to verbs starting with a vowel, the nasal is realized as ''ng'' . Monosyllabic verbs add an epenthetic vowel before prefixing and produce the prefix ''menge-'': *bor (= boring tool / drill) → mengebor (= to make a hole with drill). Verbs starting with a nasal or

approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce ...

do not add any mutant nasal, only ''me-''. The colloquial language drops ''me-'' prefix but tends to replace it with nasalization: *tanya → menanya → nanya *pikir → memikir → mikir *merepotkan → ng(e)repotin

Latvian

More information is available in the Latvian Wikipedia. Also two consonants can mutate as a group.

Ute

In Ute, also called Southern Paiute, there are three consonant mutations, which are triggered by different word-stems, The mutations are spirantization,

gemination In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

, and prenasalization: For example, the absolutive suffix -pi appears in different forms, according to the noun stem to which it is suffixed: *movi-ppi 'nose' *sappI-vi 'belly' *-mpi 'tongue'

References

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