Preaspiration in the Nordic Languages: Synchronic and Diachronic ...

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ecent studies that corroborate these impressionistic observations. First, Wretling, Strangert & Schaeffler (2002) find that preaspiration is present to varying degrees in 19 different Northern Swedish dialects. Second, Tronnier (2002) has come to a similar conclusion for 15 different Southern Swedish dialects. Both of these studies are based on data collected for the SWEDIA 2000 project (Bruce et al. 1999). And third, van Dommelen (1998, 1999, 2000) has found that Norwegian speakers of differing dialectal backgrounds have a tendency to preaspirate. Wretling et al. present findings from 19 different dialects. For each dialect, they have examined the stop production of 3 elderly male speakers, thus in total investigating the stop production of 57 subjects. Wretling et al. do not cite absolute durations in their paper, but instead report the proportion of preaspiration within the VC interval. As for segmentation criteria, Wretling et al. specify that VC sequences were divided into three segments: vowel, preaspiration and consonant. Further segmentation criteria are not indicated. Thus it is not indicated whether breathiness was included as part of the preaspiration, nor is it clear whether the end of the closure or the end of the subsequent release constitutes the end of the consonant. Not unexpectedly, Wretling et al. report the (proportionally) longest preaspirations in the Vemdalen and Arjeplog dialects (see sections 3.5.1 and 3.5.2), which both happen to be included in their survey. On average, the preaspiration of three Vemdalen speakers comprises approximately 17% of the VC interval and in the Arjeplog dialect the corresponding figure is 23%. 1 These means, however, are somewhat misleading, since in actuality preaspiration is utilised for contrastive purposes. Thus in VC syllables with non-back vowel, preaspiration comprises approximately 30% of the VC interval, while in other syllable types there is no preaspiration whatsoever. In the Arjeplog dialect the situation is reversed, since preaspiration occupies more of the VC interval in VC syllable than in VC syllables. Thus in VC syllables preaspiration comprises 23–41% of the VC interval, while in VC syllables it comprises approximately 10– 20%. 1 Wretling et al. present their findings in bar-charts instead of tables. Therefore all figures cited from their paper are approximate. – 90 –
For the remaining 17 dialects, Wretling et al. report proportional preaspiration durations of only 0.5–6%. Four dialects have proportional preaspiration durations of 4–6%, a further four around 3–4%, five dialects around 2.5% and the remaining four 1% or less. Proportional durations of approximately 5% should not be disregarded. First, one should note that only male speakers are analysed, and it is my impression, as well as that of Fant et al. (1991), that female speakers tend to preaspirate more than do male speakers. Note also that only mean durations are cited, which may obscure both contextual variation (such as the difference in preaspiration duration between VC and VC syllables) as well as individual variation, and since only three speakers represent each dialect, the results may easily be skewed. In my view, finding that elderly male speakers of several dialects have, on average, 4–6% preaspiration in VC intervals should be taken as an indication that non-normative preaspiration in these dialects can be a significant factor in stop production for some speakers, just as it is in CSw (cf. section 3.5.5). Tronnier (2002) presents findings from 15 different dialects, and investigates 10–12 speakers from each dialect, i.e. a total of more than 150 subjects. She examines four test words, two with VC syllables (tak ‘roof’ and låt ‘song’) and two with VC syllables (tack ‘thanks’ and lott ‘share’). The test words were elicited verbally without naming the target word, and once the subjects identified and uttered the target word, they were to repeat it up to five times. Thus each target word is spoken in isolation. Information on segmentation criteria is not provided. Tronnier provides data of two kinds. First, she has data on the frequency of occurrence of preaspiration for each word in each dialect (i.e., how often preaspiration was detected for each word). For tak she reports a frequency of occurrence ranging from 1–50% (median = 20%) for the different dialects. For låt, the range is 21–89% (median = 65%). For tack the range is 2–78% (median = 31%) and for lott the range is 41–98% (median = 70%). According to Tronnier, preaspiration occurs far more frequently for låt and lott than for tak and tack. Still, there seems to be a high degree of correlation between frequency of occurrence of preaspiration in different word types for the different dialects (i.e., if, for – 91 –
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Preaspiration in the Nordic Languag
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PhD dissertation November 2002 Depa
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CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..........
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4.4.4 Preaspiration duration — SW
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the following pages. Thanks also to
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ported, but these should only be ta
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Finally, in Chapter 5, the patterns
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lock (ibid:267; boldface mine). Wea
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closure, decay time of the glottal
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2 DEFINITION AND TYPOLOGY 2.1 Defin
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and Finnish the word [lhti] ‘bay
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turn into ChV sequences in which V
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2.2 Linking preaspiration and sonor
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The similarity in gestural organisa
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The fact that both preaspiration an
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have normative preaspiration, other
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usually expressed as unaspirated an
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while clusters have developed into
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ted as voiceless unaspirated or pos
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y a middle-aged male speaker. In bo
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ut this is not true of the “stand
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2.6 Auditory constraints and the ra
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The second criticism of Bladon’s
Page 51 and 52: in discharge rates in the auditory
Page 53: number of languages that possess se
Page 56 and 57: and Lappic (Finno-Ugric). It has be
Page 58 and 59: For the sake of simplicity and luci
Page 60 and 61: ‘apple,’ [vh] vatnið ‘the wa
Page 62 and 63: Table 3-1. Reflexes of Old Norse st
Page 64 and 65: In the Northern dialect, V is sligh
Page 66 and 67: Pind’s experiments as well as the
Page 68 and 69: In Area 2, where Tórshavn is situa
Page 70 and 71: in VC syllables in their speech, ju
Page 72 and 73: Table 3-4. Reflexes of ON stops in
Page 74 and 75: long vowel followed by a preaspirat
Page 76 and 77: grams), with the occasional aid of
Page 78 and 79: quantity system instead of the ON f
Page 80 and 81: ON flytja). There are no examples o
Page 82 and 83: Table 3-7. Reflexes of ON stops in
Page 84 and 85: whether she thinks that leaving out
Page 86 and 87: (Hede, Linsäll and Sveg) as well a
Page 88 and 89: (VC vs. VC). For two pairs (/tak/ v
Page 90 and 91: stop sequences that remain to be di
Page 92 and 93: do occur systematic linguistic diff
Page 94 and 95: Gräsö Forsmark Valö S W E D E N
Page 96 and 97: There are very few examples of clus
Page 98 and 99: Kökar, in the Åboland archipelago
Page 100 and 101: one hand, speakers have a tendency
Page 104 and 105: example, in a particular dialect, t
Page 106 and 107: does not give her segmentation crit
Page 108 and 109: Scotland and Ireland 1 [hphthk] 2 [
Page 110 and 111: approximately 140-150 ms in VC syll
Page 112 and 113: 1. South Saami (Southern & Ume Saam
Page 114 and 115: 1987a), Estonian (Engstrand & Krull
Page 116 and 117: Table 3-13. Reflexes of ON postvoca
Page 118 and 119: and Tórshavn Faroese data were eli
Page 120 and 121: ducing breathiness into the voice q
Page 122 and 123: Figure 4-3. An example of a sequenc
Page 124 and 125: 4.2 Central Standard Swedish (CSw)
Page 126 and 127: very large, since postaspiration wa
Page 128 and 129: Several spectrographic examples of
Page 130 and 131: The data indicate that there is lit
Page 132 and 133: produced and in 9 cases there were
Page 134 and 135: To examine effects of syllable stru
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Page 138 and 139: durations exceeding 120 ms, preaspi
Page 140 and 141: mately 70 ms. Just before the stop
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Page 144 and 145: As regards nasal + fortis stop sequ
Page 146 and 147: most of the remaining instances he
Page 148 and 149: (comparable to our taverna type) ha
Page 150 and 151: The CSw data have shown that word-i
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golf ‘golf,’ in which the utter
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o Figure 4-35. Subj. GT: […tv]
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word-initial lenis stop preceded by
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(i.e., short mVOffT and long mVOT).
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make it easier to refer to stops in
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[mh] ‘food’ is used, and for fu
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clear stop correlate, 26 (7%) had a
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All subjects considered, for lenis
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Figure 4-45(a) plots preaspiration
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cluster and 2 instances with a kt c
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4.3.2.5 Postaspiration duration Ins
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closure gesture. As the escape chan
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fricative constriction cannot be at
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is glottal during the first 50 ms.
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4.3.4 Summary and discussion As reg
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from the preaspiration noise itself
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Many instances of word-medial forti
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In the Gräsö dialect, the sonoran
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that the presence of a voiceless na
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of this type as well. Remarkably, t
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On the whole, the fortis vs. lenis
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120 100 80 60 40 20 0 120 100 80 60
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Icelandic listeners, even though th
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discussion of possible reasons for
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Table 4-16. The findings of Indrið
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these speakers will henceforth be r
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lenes are often produced with a voi
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Nasal + stop sequences in the Weste
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inte ‘not’ without the final vo
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ange for the remaining subjects is
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For word-medial contexts data are a
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instances may have preaspiration on
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4.6 Summary and conclusions The sur
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that the ON word-initial lenes have
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dialect in the Åland archipelago.
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clear that ON m, n + p, t, k sequen
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gradual process rather than a leap
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stops that we find in, for example,
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oth found in V()C syllables, but ar
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Some Icelandic linguists seem to ha
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On a quite different note, Liberman
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dialect. With this in mind, Hansson
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(1997:114f), Iceland, the Faroes, J
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observed phonological distribution
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sense, preaspiration is linked more
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higher degree of spectral tilt than
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a failure to apply a process of per
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similar to that in CSw today. Some
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from t1 through t8, the productions
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ation, voiceless nasality before fo
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parameter such as VOT or F0, may th
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identity and paralinguistic informa
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—. 1974. “On the influence of N
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Gillies, William. 1993. “Scottish
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Johanson, Lars. 1998. “The histor
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Lyttkens, Ivar Adolf & Fredrik Amad
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—. 1995b. “Speaking rate, VOT a
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Stölten, Katrin. 2002. Dialektalit
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Department of Linguistics, Stockhol
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