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

Table 4–9. Mean postaspiration duration (in ms; measured as mVOT) of wordinitial
and word-medial fortis stops for all four CSw subjects. The words in the
leftmost column refer to word types, as explained in the text.
GT CK MP FS
Po n Po n Po n Po n
tennis 44 17 52 43 46 67 58 66
till 38 23 45 38 37 71 50 50
taverna 58 4 40 5 44 16 55 11
båten 27 23 23 31 28 83 32 52
vatten 20 19 21 32 29 37 28 46
These results are similar to those obtained by Löfqvist (1976; see
also Löfqvist 1981), who studied the durational characteristics of read
nonsense words in frame sentences spoken by 4 Swedish subjects with
differing dialectal backgrounds.
Table 4–10. An excerpt from Löfqvist’s (1976) findings on occlusion and
aspiration duration in nonsense words spoken by 4 Swedish subjects. The
equivalent word type categories used for the data in Table 4–9 are given within
parentheses.
Occl. dur. Postasp. dur.
# CV ( tennis) 138 47
# CV ( taverna) 127 32
# VC ( båten) 171–188 15–16 1
An excerpt of Löfqvist’s (1976) findings is presented in Table 4–10.
Löfqvist found that fortis stops in word-initial position before a stressed
vowel (comparable to our tennis type category) had a mean postaspiration
duration of 47 ms. Word-medial stops following a stressed vowel
(comparable to our båten type) had a mean postaspiration duration of
only 15–16 ms. Word-initial stops before a lexically unstressed vowel
1 Löfqvist separates the nonsense words with this syllable structure into two types, depending
on whether they are produced with accent 1 (acute) or accent 2 (grave). Occlusion
durations differ somewhat between the two categories: 171 ms for accent 1;
188 ms for accent 2. Aspiration durations are almost identical, though: 16 ms for
accent 1; 15 ms for accent 2.
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