In Old English, velar stops were palatalized incases but non others. That resulted in some alternations, numerous of which construct been levelled, but traces occur in some word doublets such as ditch /dɪtʃ/ and dike /daɪk/.
In the past tense ofverbs, English also continues traces of several ancient sound developments such as *kt > *xt and *ŋx > *x; many of them do been further complicated by the loss of /x/ in the Middle English.
The pair teach /tiːt͡ʃ/ : taught /tɔːt/ has a combination of both this and palatalization.
Apalatalization, called yod-coalescence, occurs in loanwords from Latin. One subtype affects the sibilant consonants: earlier /sj/ and /zj/ were palatalized, leading to an alternation between alveolar /s z/ and postalveolar /ʃ ʒ/.
Another unproductive layer results from the Vulgar Latin palatalization of velar stops before front vowels. this is the thus imported from the Romance languages, and /k ɡ/ alternate with /s dʒ/.
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 /t/ and /ʃ/.
The Celtic languages are well-known for their initial consonant mutations. The individual languages reconstruct on the number of mutations available: Scottish Gaelic has one, Irish and Manx have two, Welsh, Cornish and Breton have four whether mixed mutations are counted. Cornish and Breton have known 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 undergo a change on the structures 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 almost of the languages, the possessive determiners 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 advanced 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 one time having the form *ak, and theconsonant influenced the coming after or as a a object that is caused or presented by something else of. sounds.
Welsh has three main a collection of matters sharing a common attribute of initial consonant mutation: soft mutation Welsh: treiglad meddal; nasal mutation Welsh: treiglad trwynol; and aspirate mutation, which is sometimes called spirant mutation Welsh: treiglad llaes. The fourth breed 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 /ɡ/ 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 non normally transmitted 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 has two consonant mutations: lenitionIrish: séimhiú [ˈʃeː.vʲuː] and eclipsis Irish: urú [ˈʊ.ɾˠuː].
Lenition
Lenition séimhiú is identified by an h coming after or as a solution of. 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:
Eclipsis
The coming after or as a or situation. of. 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.
The almost common a collection of matters sharing a common attribute of mutations are the alternation between velar and postalveolar consonants:
Other common mutations are:
Modern Hebrew shows a limited quality 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.
Rendaku, meaning "sequential voicing," is a mutation of the initial consonant of a non-initial component in a Japanese compound word:
Word-medial consonant mutation is found in several Uralic languages and has the traditional name of consonant gradation. It is pervasive, particularly in the Samic and Finnic branches.
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 ordinarily appears in the nominative singular of nominals and the infinitive of verbs.
The consonants subject to graduation are the plosives p, t, k previously a vowel, sonorants m, n, l, r, and h. Plosives that are preceded by all other obstruent or followed by any consonant do not undergo gradation.
The gradation of loanwords may add new gradation patterns that are not native to Finnish:
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, the initial consonant of thesyllable becomes voiced. The shift occurs in these phones:
Examples:
The second type of consonant mutation occurs when the phoneme /dʑ/ after the nasalized/ɴ/ becomes a /j/ sound in compound words.
Examples:
The third type of consonant mutation occurs when phonemes /p, pʰ, b, t, tʰ, d/, after the nasalized/ɴ/, become /m/ in compound words:
Those patterns of mutations probably arose when a nasal prefix, indicating the realis mood, became combined with the verb's initial consonant. The possible ancestral sample of mutation and its descendants in some modern Central Vanuatu languages are reported below:
Initial consonant mutation also serves a grammatical goal in some New Caledonian languages. For example, Iaai uses initial consonant mutation in verbs to distinguish between specific/definite objects and generic/indefinite objects:
Those forms likely derive from an earlier spirantization of the formerly-reduplicated consonant.
The Dholuo language one of the Luo languages shows alternations between voiced and voiceless states of theconsonant of a noun stem. In the construct state 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.
An initial consonant that is an unvoiced stop or s is deleted, leaving only the nasal in its place.
Applied to verbs starting with a vowel, the nasal is realized as ng [ŋ].
Monosyllabic verbs increase an epenthetic vowel before prefixing and produce the prefix menge-:
Verbs starting with a nasal or approximant consonant do not add any mutant nasal, only me-.
The colloquial language drops me- prefix but tends to replace it with nasalization:[]
More information is available in the Latvian Wikipedia.
Also two consonants can mutate as a group.
In Ute, also called Southern Paiute, there are three consonant mutations, which are triggered by different word-stems, The mutations are spirantization, gemination, and prenasalization:
For example, the absolutive suffix -pi appears in different forms, according to the noun stem to which it is suffixed:
The Sindarin language created by J. R. R. Tolkien has mutation patterns inspired by those of Welsh. The number one letter of a Sindarin noun normally undergoes mutation when the noun follows a closely-associated word such as an article or preposition: certh 'rune' but i gerth 'the rune'. Also, the moment element of compounds and direct objects of verbs undergo mutation, as in Welsh. As of 2020, the Sindarin mutation patterns are not fully understood since Tolkien's notes on the language are not readily available. However, some Sindarin enthusiasts and linguists have extrapolated patterns from published Sindarin texts. The linguist David Salo, who worked on the Peter Jackson trilogies The Lord of the Rings 2001 - 2003 and The Hobbit 2012 - 2014, proposes the following mutations in his book A Gateway to Sindarin 2004:
A blank cell indicates no change.
The nasal mutation, however, does not affect d and g in the clusters dr, gr, gl and gw.