Aspects of Brittonic spirantisation under Laryngeal Realism

Abstract

This paper examines the three principal environments in which spirantisation occurs in all of the Brittonic languages: (a) as fricatives which ultimately continue geminate aspirated voiceless plosives; (b) as the result of various triggering forms that cause the spirant mutation; and (c) after liquids. It is argued that these changes – long a vexed problem of Brittonic diachronic ­phonology – fall out naturally when one adopts a Laryngeal Realism view of Celtic phonology, under which the plosive series are not contrasted via the laryngeal feature [voice] but via the feature [spread glottis], i.e. the phonological contrast between the plosive series is /ph th k h/ vs. /p t k/.1