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Fortis and lenis sonorants
[edit]In Old Irish, the coronal sonorants (those spelled l n r) were divided not only into broad and slender types, but also into fortis and lenis types. The precise phonetic definition of these terms is somewhat vague, but the fortis sounds were probably longer in duration and may have had a larger area of contact between the tongue and the roof of the mouth than the lenis sounds. By convention, the fortis sounds are transcribed with capital letters /L N R/, the lenis with lower case /l n r/. Thus Old Irish had four rhotic phonemes /Rˠ, Rʲ, rˠ, rʲ/, four lateral phonemes /Lˠ, Lʲ, lˠ, lʲ/, and four coronal nasal phonemes /Nˠ, Nʲ, nˠ, nʲ/ (McCone 1994:90). Fortis and lenis sonorants contrasted with each other between vowels and word-finally after vowels in Old Irish, for example berraid /bʲeRˠɨðʲ/ "he shears" vs. beraid /bʲerˠɨðʲ/ "he may carry"; coll /koLˠ/ "hazel" vs. col /kolˠ/ "sin"; sonn /sˠoNˠ/ "stake" vs. son /sˠonˠ/ "sound" (Quin 1975:4–5). Word-initially, only the fortis sounds were found, but they become lenis in environments where morphosyntactically triggered lenition is found: rún /Rˠuːnˠ/ "mystery" vs. a rún /a rˠuːnˠ/ "his mystery", lón /Lˠoːnˠ/ "provision" vs. a lón /a lˠoːnˠ/ "his provision" (Quin 1975:8).
In the modern language, the four rhotics have been reduced to two in all dialects, /Rˠ, Rʲ, rˠ/ having merged as /ɾˠ/. For the laterals and nasals, some dialects have kept all four distinct, while others have reduced them to three or two distinct phonemes, as summarized in the following table.
| Old Irish | Ulster | Connacht | Munster | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rosguill (Lucas 1979) |
Meenawannia (Quiggin 1906) |
Mayo (Mhac an Fhailigh 1968) |
Connemara (de Bhaldraithe 1966) |
Aran (Finck 1899) |
Dingle Peninsula (Ó Sé 2000) |
West Muskerry (Ó Cuív 1944) | |
| Rˠ | ɾˠ | ɾˠ | ɾˠ | ɾˠ | ɾˠ | ɾˠ | ɾˠ |
| rˠ | |||||||
| Rʲ | |||||||
| rʲ | ɾʲ | ɾʲ | ɾʲ | ɾʲ | ɾʲ | ɾʲ | ɾʲ |
| Lˠ | ɫ̪ | ɫ̪ | ɫ̪ | ɫ̪ | ɫ̪ | ɫ̪ | ɫ̪ |
| lˠ | ɫ | ɫ | l | ||||
| lʲ | l | lʲ | lʲ | lʲ | lʲ | lʲ | |
| Lʲ | l̠ʲ | l̠ʲ | l̠ʲ | l̠ʲ | l̠ʲ | ||
| Nˠ | n̪ˠ | n̪ˠ | n̪ˠ | n̪ˠ | n̪ˠ | n̪ˠ | n̪ˠ |
| nˠ | nˠ | nˠ | n | ||||
| nʲ | n | nʲ | nʲ | nʲ | nʲ | nʲ | |
| Nʲ | n̠ʲ | n̠ʲ | n̠ʲ | n̠ʲ | n̠ʲ | nʲ word-initially ɲ elsewhere | |
| Note: l̠ʲ and n̠ʲ are alveolo-palatal consonants. | |||||||