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

(comparable to our taverna type) had an intermediate mean postaspiration
duration of 32 ms.
Löfqvist also found that the duration of the occlusion was longer for
stops that followed a stressed vowel than for stops that followed an unstressed
vowel. Thus, aspirations tended to be shortest when the occlusions
were long. Given this tendency, Löfqvist leans towards attributing
this difference in degree of aspiration to differences in closure duration.
He says:
[…] one can argue that the loss of aspiration in Swedish voiceless
stops in certain positions is due to an increase in the duration of the
oral closure. This is evident from the fact that closure duration is
longer for the unaspirated allophones and also because the interval
from implosion to peak glottal opening can vary without any
concomitant changes in aspiration for these sounds; the glottis is still
in a position suitable for voicing to occur at the release since the
glottal opening and closing gestures are executed during the occlusion.
(Löfqvist 1976:29)
This explanation yields a specific prediction. There should be an inverse
relationship between closure duration and postaspiration duration
in the CSw spontaneous data. Specifically, this relationship should be
evident when one plots postaspiration duration against closure duration
for stops in båten and vatten type words. However, Figures 4–24 and 4–
25 show that this prediction is not borne out by the data. In Figure 4–24,
postaspiration duration is plotted against closure duration for all
intervocalic stops in båten type words, and in Figure 4–25 for vatten type
words. In both figures, results from all subjects (GT, CK, MP and FS)
are pooled. Keep in mind, here, that postaspiration duration in these CSw
data is measured as mVOT, not just VOT (see section 4.1.2), and thus
the aspiration durations reported are generally longer than in Löfqvist’s
study. In neither word type is there any correlation between closure
duration and postaspiration duration. For båten type words r 2 = 0.0302
and for vatten type words r 2 = 0.0027. In fact, postaspiration durations
seem to be fairly constant across different closure durations for both
word types.
Note also that the closure durations reported by Löfqvist are far
greater than the closure durations in our CSw data. This is almost cer-
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