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

All subjects considered, for lenis stop word types, i.e. oddur, fjallið,
fótur and radari, only 20 of 552 instances are preaspirated. Usually,
these preaspirations can be attributed to the narrow escape channel in the
production of close vowels, which results in a friction noise and induces
voicelessness. In this way, preaspiration in these word types can be seen
as a “by-product” of the speech production process. For the fortis stop
word types átta and vatnið, the results are reversed. Only 23 of 280 instances
are unaspirated. For all the word types mentioned so far, there is
obviously a very strong correspondence between unaspirated and lenis
on the one hand and between preaspirated and fortis on the other. It
should be noted, though, that the production of a fricative without a stop
closure occurs quite commonly for almost all word types, especially
those with intervocalic stops.
The fortis vs. lenis distinction is less clear-cut for the remaining
word types (matur, hatta, hvat and seks). The production of stops in
these word types will be discussed further in the following section, in
which the fortis stop production of each subject is analysed in more
detail.
4.3.2.4 Preaspiration duration
In this section, the production patterns of each subject are analysed
in more detail, particularly the durational relationship between vowel and
preaspiration. This will allow us to compare the production of fortis stops
in Faroese with that in other Nordic languages. We begin with SG’s data
and then look at each subject, BJ, EI and MS, in turn. The data discussed
for these subjects are summarised in Table 4–13 and in Figure 4–45(a–
d). For ease of exposition, we shall refer to the word types átta, hatta,
vatnið, seks and matur as fortis stop word types. These are the word
types that should be preaspirated according to the Area 1 distribution of
preaspiration. Conversely, the word types oddur, fjallið, fótur and radari
will be referred to as lenis stop word types.
The phonological distribution of preaspiration in SG’s speech is
largely in accordance with the Area 1 distribution (see section 3.3). The
distribution of the three main stop variants in SG’s fortis stop word types
is given in Table 4–13. There are 44 occurrences of átta type words, of
which 8 are unaspirated (i.e., preaspiration < 15 ms), 29 are preaspirated
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