Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 103. kötet (2006)

Tanulmányok - Tamás Ildikó: The Lule Saami vocalism 7

1.1. Vowel length In Saami writing the length of vowels is generally not indicated. The length relationships of vowels are very complicated and depend on the surrounding consonants (or consonant clusters), on the quality of the vowel of the neighbouring syllables, and finally on whether the vowels occur in even or odd syllables. In Lule Saami, length oppositions have a meaning discriminating (and/or grammatical) function only in the case of a vs. á, e.g., mánná SgNom 'child' ~ manna VxSg3 'go'; máná CxSgGen 'child' ~ maná VxSg2 'go'.6 Diphthongs and á are long, ä and e can be either short or long depending on their phonetic environment, whereas a, i and и are always short. Therefore, we cannot generally speak of a quantitative opposition of vowels. The length of vowels pronounced either short or long is specified by structural rules: they can be long, half-long, or short.7 The length of a vowel in the

first syllable is determined by 6 Of the Saami dialects, the quantitative opposition of vowels has a significant (meaning discriminating) role in Koltta, but we have a restricted number of examples even in this case: lpKo sä'lbb [s£elbbE]

'lock, padlock' Sg.Nom, sä'lbbe [saelbbe] 'to prick' Ind.Praes.Pl/3, salbbe [szelbbe:] 'to lock' Ind.Praes.Pl/3 (McRobbie-Utasi 1999: 27). 7 Pekka Sammallahti identifies eight different lengths in Lappish (overshort, undershort, short, half-short, half-long, underlong, long, overlong) despite the fact that they do not change the meaning (Sammallahti 1998: 174). The research on the length relations of vowels is Lappish is still in an early stage, therefore I will not deal with this debated issue, which otherwise has no significance with respect to the present topic of harmony types. I believe that the slight differences of the lengths of vowels are due to the steady relations between vowels and consonants within the foot. They are also related to the fact that Lappish feet can be regarded constant basic units with respect to length. This latter seems to be proved by the Koltta-Lappish research of McRobbie-Utasi