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    No geminate consonants
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    Frisian only has single consonants and no geminates. Following a short vowel, however, Frisian does have word-internal ambisyllabic consonants, resulting from the demand that the rhyme of a word-internal syllable be confined to a minimum of two positions (see also degemination).

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    The vowels are subdivided along a qualitative and a quantitative dimension. The latter does not play a role for consonants. Frisian only has single consonants and no geminates, so the long vowels have no consonantal counterpart.

    The word-internal rhyme of a syllable in Frisian is confined to a minimum of two positions, as is expressed by the Rhyme Constraint. This means that a consonant between a full vowel and schwa is syllabified as ambisyllabic (see Haan (1999)). In words like modder /modər/ [modr̩] mud, leppel /lɛpəl/ [lɛpl̩] spoon, and wetter /vɛtər/ [vɛtr̩] water, word-internal /d/, /p/, and /t/ belong to both the coda of the left-hand and the onset of the right-hand syllable. They have a longer duration than when occurring word-initially or word-finally. Their ambisyllabicity is enforced by the shortness of the left-hand (full) vowel. The difference between a short and a long consonant, therefore, is contextually determined — there is a complementary distribution —, so it is never distinctive.

    Sipma (1913:14, §50) notes that a consonant may become lengthened when, in exclamative expressions, the word it is part of is emphasized, as in It is in griis! [ɡr:i:s] it's a great pity, it's a downright shame! lit: It is a horror! and It is al wier! [ɔl:] it is!, it does! lit.: really true. The consonant's longer duration here is a matter of phonetic implementation.

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    Sipma (1913) also notes that exclamativity may be achieved by the insertion of schwa between plosive and liquid: it is in griis [ɡəri:s] This yields a longer duration for the word as a whole.

    References
    • Haan, Germen J. de1999Frisian monophthongs and syllable structureUs Wurk4819-30
    • Sipma, Pieter1913Phonology and Grammar of Modern West FrisianLondon, New YorkOxford University Press
    • Sipma, Pieter1913Phonology and Grammar of Modern West FrisianLondon, New YorkOxford University Press
    About this article
    Author(s): Willem Visser
    Category: Frisian Phonology
    Keywords: geminate consonant
    Version: 1.0, December 2015
    Version history:
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    1.0 Willem Visser December 2015
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