Finnish phonology #

This file gives Finnish phonemes as segments and states palatal harmony and consonant gradation over them. In Karlsson's description the vowels fall into three classes. The back vowels /ɑ o u/ and the front vowels /æ ø y/, written ⟨a o u⟩ and ⟨ä ö y⟩, do not mix within a word, and the neutral vowels /e i/ occur with either set. A suffix vowel alternates with the stem, so that the partitive is kirja-a 'book' but käsi-ä 'hand', and the inessive talo-ssa 'in the house' but metsä-ssä 'in the forest'. Harmony is a single system in the sense of Rose and Walker. The feature [back] spreads rightward from the last harmonic stem vowel to suffix vowels unspecified for it, consonants and the neutral vowels are transparent, and a stem with no harmonic vowel takes front suffixes.

The feature values come from the PHOIBLE chart, read at the vowels of a PHOIBLE Finnish inventory and kept on the features that distinguish the eight vowels. The alternating suffix vowel is the meet of /ɑ/ and /æ/, the features they share, and so has no value for [back]. Phonemes are named by their letters, so a list of them reads as the word is spelled.

Karlsson writes the vowel of the illative -Vn and of the passive personal ending as V, a vowel that is the same as the nearest vowel before it, as in talo-on 'into the house' and tie-hen 'to the road'. V is a vowel with no other feature, and it copies each quality feature from that vowel before harmony applies. When the nearest vowel is the suffix vowel, as in luke-ma-an 'to read', V is left without [back] and harmony gives both the same value.

Consonant gradation, the second of Karlsson's two important sound alternations, weakens a stop at the onset of a syllable that an ending closes. The long stops shorten, kukka 'flower' but kuka-n, which is quantitative gradation, and the short stops change, katu 'street' but kadu-lla, tupa 'hut' but tuva-ssa, tauko 'pause' but tauo-n, which is qualitative gradation. By Karlsson's rule A the ending consists of one consonant or begins with two, and only a short vowel stands between the stop and the ending, so that katto 'roof' gives kato-n and kato-lla but katto-na.

Main definitions #

Finnish.a, Finnish.k and the like: the vowels and the consonants of the example forms, and Finnish.vowels, Finnish.consonants the sets of them.
Finnish.A, Finnish.O: the alternating suffix vowels.
Finnish.V, Finnish.C: the copy vowel, which as a rule context is any vowel, and any consonant.
Finnish.palatalHarmony, Finnish.vowelCopy: palatal harmony and the copying of V.
Finnish.surface: the surface form of a word, vowel copy followed by harmony.
Finnish.ofChar, Finnish.ofString?: the phonemes that a letter and a word write.
Finnish.consonantGradation: the qualitative rules followed by the quantitative ones.

Main results #

Finnish.subset_fin: the vowels are those of PHOIBLE's Finnish inventory.
Finnish.isNeutral_iff, Finnish.isBackVowel_iff: the neutral vowels are /e i/ and the back vowels /ɑ o u/.
Finnish.naturalClass_A: the natural class of the suffix vowel is /ɑ æ/.
Finnish.unspecified_back_A, Finnish.setFeature_back_A: the suffix vowel has no [back], and with [back] filled in it is /ɑ/ or /æ/.
Finnish.sourceValue_back: a back stem vowel is the source across a neutral one, and a stem of neutral vowels has no source.
Finnish.unspecified_round_iff, Finnish.hasValue_syllabic_consonants: V is the only vowel without [round], and every consonant is [−syllabic], as vowel copy requires.
Finnish.surface_suffix: the suffix vowel after back, front and neutral stems, and V after a vowel and after the suffix vowel.
Finnish.katto: Karlsson's paradigm of katto, gradation in katon, katolla and katolta and none in kattona.
Finnish.quantitative_gradation, Finnish.qualitative_gradation: his examples of the two types.

Implementation notes #

The inventory is PHOIBLE 2535, which transcribes the low back vowel [ɑ] and the mid vowels with lowering diacritics. The consonants take plain chart glyphs, which that inventory writes with place diacritics, so membership is stated for the vowels only.

Consonant gradation belongs to the lexicon, since many words do not undergo it (auto-ssa 'in the car'), so surface leaves it out and a stem is given in the grade its ending selects, as in Karlsson's segmentations pöydä-llä and käde-ssä. A search copies one feature, so vowel copy is four searches. V is the only vowel without [round] (unspecified_round_iff), so the targets of each search are the vowels without it and [round] is copied last.

A rule has one right context, so each alternation is two rules, one for an ending of a single consonant and one for an ending that begins with two. The qualitative rules apply first, since the short stop that quantitative gradation leaves does not weaken again. The qualitative rules are stated after a vowel. A long stop is two segments, and so is a long vowel, which the rules do not yet tell from a short one.

TODO #

The qualitative alternations after /h l r/ and the assimilations after a nasal or liquid, Karlsson's types (6) and (8) to (12), the rare types (13) to (16), the ban on gradation before a long vowel, and rule B for verbs.

References #

Phonemes #

A phoneme is named by its letter, so a is ɑ, ä is æ and ö is ø.

Finnish phonology #

Main definitions #

Main results #

Implementation notes #

TODO #

References #

Phonemes #

Harmonic classification #

The harmony system #

Spelling #

Consonant gradation #