Pre-occlusion is a phonological process, involving the insertion of a very short plosive consonant before a sonorant consonant. In Manx, this applies to stressed monosyllabic words (i.e. words one syllable long), and is also found in Cornish on certain stressed syllables. The inserted consonant is homorganic with the following sonorant, which means it has the same place of articulation. Long vowels are often shortened before preoccluded sounds. In transcription, pre-occluding consonants in final position are typically written with a superscripted letter in Manx[1] and in Cornish[2].
Examples in Manx include:[3][4]
In Cornish, pre-occlusion mostly affects the reflexes of older geminate/fortis /m/, intrinsically geminated in Old Cornish, and /nn/ (or /N/ depending on preferred notation). It also arises in a few cases where the combination /n+j/ was apparently re-interpreted as /nnʲ/.
Examples in Cornish:
In Faroese, pre-occlusion also occurs, as in kallar [ˈkadlaɹ] 'you call, he calls', seinna [ˈsaiːdna] 'latter'. A similar feature occurs in Icelandic, where the pre-occluding consonant is voiceless, as in galli [ˈkatlɪ] ('error'); sæll [ˈsaitl̥], seinna [ˈseitna]; Spánn [ˈspautn̥].