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 capturing
at the same time the regular phonological character of Icelandic
preaspiraton.
The paper is organized as follows: Section 1 briefly reviews some phonetic
descriptions of preaspiration. Section 2 shows why preaspiration must be
considered an active phonological rule in Modern Icelandic. Section 3 presents
an informal description of what the preaspiration rule has to do. Section 4
gives both an autosegmental and a more conventional generative phonological
statement of the rule. Section 5 gives arguments for the autosegmental analysis.
Section 6 is a Conclusion, followed by an Appendix on preaspiration in other
languages.