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

nasal /d/ is dropped completely (i.e., normatively) in many Swedish
dialects. Thus the phonetic variation in the production of nasal + lenis
stop sequences in CSw contains parallels to a sound change that has occurred
in Swedish dialects.
4.2.8 Summary and discussion
In light of these findings for Central Standard Swedish (CSw), one
can argue that the characterisation of the fortis ~ lenis stop contrast as
voiced vs. voiceless is rather misleading or, at best, incomplete. To be
sure, lenis stops in voiced contexts (both word-initially and wordmedially)
are predominantly voiced. However, they are very frequently
expressed as fricatives and approximants, with strongly reduced tongue
or lip movements. We have also seen that at the beginning of utterances,
lenis stops tend to have a voicing lead which, however, tends to be absent
in function words. These two sources of variation, lenition in intervocalic
contexts and utterance-initial voicelessness, could be attributed to
articulatory reduction, or hypo-speech (cf., e.g., Lindblom 1990). Thus,
speakers may undershooting articulatory targets.
The variation in the phonetic expression of fortis stops cannot be attributed
to articulatory reduction to the same extent. Fortis stops have
variable articulatory organisations, depending on context. In word-initial
position, as well as before stressed vowels in any word position, fortis
stops tend to be postaspirated, and there is very little tendency for preaspiration.
Also, postaspiration in word-initial position occurs irrespective
of whether or not the following vowel has lexical stress. By contrast,
word-medial fortis stops, particularly in VC syllables, tend to be preaspirated
in the speech of two of the subjects, and mostly unaspirated in the
speech of the two remaining subjects. None of the subjects tends to postaspirate
such stops to any significant degree.
This variation in fortis stops cannot be attributed to hypo-articulation.
From an articulatory point of view, the two main types of fortis
stops involve a difference in timing relations between glottal and supralaryngeal
gestures. For postaspirated stops, there is a very short time lag
(or none at all) between modal voice offset and stop closure, while there
is a considerable time lag between stop release and modal voice onset
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