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Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various "grades". It is typical of Uralic languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Northern Sámi, and the Samoyed language Nganasan. Of the Finnic languages, Votic is known for its extensive set of gradation patterns. Consonant gradation in some of these languages is not (or is no longer) purely phonological, although this may be surmised for various reconstructions of Proto-Finnic. In archiphonemic terms, the mutation is a type of lenition in which there are quantitative (e.g. /kː/ vs. /k/) as well as qualitative (e.g. /k/ vs. /v/) alternations. What types of consonants and consonant clusters may undergo gradation vary from language to language; for example, Northern Sámi has three different grades (as well as having three quantities of consonant length), and also allows for quantitative gradation of its sonorants /l m n r/. Most Finnic languages, however, have two grades and only allow stops to undergo gradation. Languages may also have other constraints for loanwords; for example, loan words and some personal names in Finnish may have quantitative gradation, but not qualitative; thus, ''auto'' does not become '' *audon'' '(the) car's', but remains ''auton''. In addition, the term has been recently used for an unrelated alternation pattern reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, the parent language of the Germanic languages. ==Definition== The term "consonant gradation" has been used in Uralic linguistics to refer to almost any possible process of word-medial alternation involving lenition or fortition. The more lenited alternant is known as the weak grade; the more fortited alternant is known as the strong grade. The exact realization of the contrast is not crucial. In its widest sense "consonant gradation" can be considered near-synonymous to "consonant alternation", covering a number of unrelated phenomena. However, in particular consonant gradation refers to a group of processes found in the Samic, Finnic and Samoyedic languages, which share stark similarities, and which are commonly believed to be historically connected. The common archetype is an alternation where a weak grade is found in two specific environments: # A consonant appearing at the beginning of an original non-initial closed syllable # A consonant appearing at the beginning of an original non-initial secondarily stressed syllable The first type is known as radical gradation or syllabic gradation. A syllable was closed if it ended in a consonant, which in particular always occurred with a word-final consonant, but also if vowels were separated by two or more consonants (including geminates). The second type is known as suffixal gradation or rhythmic gradation. Already in Proto-Uralic, but also in its descendants Proto-Samic, Proto-Finnic and Proto-Samoyedic, stress originally followed a trochaic pattern, falling on odd-numbered syllables, with the 1st syllable primarily stressed, and the 3rd, 5th… syllables secondarily stressed. In all languages that maintain this particular type of gradation, it is understood to have originally been a predictable phonological process. In most it has evolved further to a less predictable system of consonant mutation, of morphophonological or even purely morphological nature. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Consonant gradation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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