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

separation line between preaspirated and unaspirated stops. Thus, when
preaspiration duration is intermediate, and the stop is neither clearly unaspirated
nor clearly preaspirated, there is no way of determining
whether the speaker intended to produce a fortis or a lenis stop. Either
such cases must be omitted from analysis, or a division line is created
between unaspirated and preaspirated. Here, the latter alternative was
chosen.
Figure 4–44 shows the number of occurrences of different types of
stop production for all word types. The results for all four subjects are
pooled. The length of each bar (i.e., the x-axis) indicates the number of
observations made for the different word categories. Phonetic categories
are coded using a grey-scale in each bar. The leftmost, dark-grey segments
indicate the number of unaspirated stops, i.e. stops produced with
less than 15 ms of preaspiration; the white segments indicate the number
of stops produced as fricatives without a stop closure; and the light-grey
segments indicate the number of preaspirated stops, i.e. stops produced
with more than 15 ms of preaspiration.
Unaspirated Fricative Preaspirated
oddur
fjallið
fótur
radari
átta
vatnið
matur
hatta
hvat
seks
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260
Number of occurrences
Figure 4–44. The number of occurrences of the three main stop variants for all
word types considered, coded on a grey-scale (see text). Results from all subjects
have been pooled.
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