This paper presents a new phonological analysis of preaspiration in Icelandic.Its purpose is to get as close to the phonetic facts as possible while capturingat the same time the regular phonological character of Icelandicpreaspiraton.
The paper is organized as follows: Section 1 briefly reviews some phoneticdescriptions of preaspiration. Section 2 shows why preaspiration must beconsidered an active phonological rule in Modern Icelandic. Section 3 presentsan informal description of what the preaspiration rule has to do. Section 4gives both an autosegmental and a more conventional generative phonologicalstatement of the rule. Section 5 gives arguments for the autosegmental analysis.Section 6 is a Conclusion, followed by an Appendix on preaspiration in otherlanguages.