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

initially rather than word-medially. Also, the neuter definite article eitt,
the preposition and infinitive marker at and the negation ikki were not
included in this analysis, since they are rarely produced with a stop
closure. Similarly, the word veit in the phrase eg veit ikki ‘I don’t know’
was excluded since it is very rarely produced with a full stop closure. 1
4.3.2.2 Data overview
A total of 1356 instances of word-medial, postvocalic stops were
analysed. Of these, 843 were produced with a complete stop closure (see
Table 4–12, rightmost column). In these cases, it was possible to measure
preaspiration duration. In the remaining 513 instances, it was not possible
to obtain the relevant measurements for various reasons. First, in
318 cases a full stop closure was not produced and instead the subject
produced a voiced or voiceless fricative. Second, in 86 cases there was
no correlate in the acoustic signal that could be identified as reflecting
the production of a stop. Third, in 83 cases, the vowel preceding the stop
was too breathy, creaky or short to allow an estimate of voice offset. And
fourth, a further 25 instances had to be discarded for reasons such as external
noise, hesitation during word production and the speaker’s own
laughter.
Table 4–12. An overview of the word-medial, postvocalic stop data analysed
for the four Faroese subjects.
EI MS SG BJ Total
Stop closure 202 226 154 261 843
Fricative 110 39 86 83 318
Incomplete stop 24 22 15 25 86
Incomplete vowel 26 32 7 18 83
Laughter etc. 10 11 4 1 26
Total 372 330 266 388 1356
For subject EI, 372 word-medial, postvocalic stops were analysed
(see Table 4–12). Of these, 202 (54%) had a full stop closure, 110 (30%)
were realised as a fricative without a stop closure, 24 (6%) did not have a
1 Typically, the phrase eg veit ikki is produced as [].
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