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

Figure 4–45(a) plots preaspiration (Pr) duration against the combined
duration of vowel and preaspiration (VPr) for SG’s fortis stop
word types. The filled circles indicate data points in VC and VCC syllables.
In such syllables, the stop is always preceded by a phonologically
short vowel. The word types included in this group are átta, vatnið, hatta
and seks. The unfilled triangles indicate data points in matur type words.
In such words, the stop occurs in a VC syllable, and is therefore preceded
by a phonologically long vowel.
For both types of context (VC/VCC and VC), we observe that as
vowel duration increases, so does preaspiration duration. The trend lines
can be used as guides to estimate the Pr/VPr ratio, i.e., how much of the
vowel + preaspiration interval is comprised by preaspiration. 1 Consider,
for example, the word types represented by filled circles (i.e., stops in
VC syllables). At VPr durations of 200 ms, Pr is likely to be slightly
over 100 ms and thus preaspiration comprises roughly 50% of the vowel
+ preaspiration interval. This proportion remains fairly constant as VPr
duration increases.
Subject BJ has a phonological distribution of preaspiration similar to
that of SG, but seems to adhere to the Area 1 distribution less rigidly
than he does. The distribution of the three main stop variants in BJ’s
fortis stop word types is given in Table 4–13. There are 69 occurrences
of átta type words, which predominantly have preaspirated stops. There
are 44 preaspirated cases, 18 fricative cases, and 7 cases are unaspirated.
However, no preaspiration is registered for BJ’s 31 instances of hatta
type words. Instead, there are 19 instances of hatta type words in which
BJ produces the stop as a fricative without a stop closure, and 12 cases in
which there is a stop closure but little or no preaspiration. Again,
therefore, fricatives are the dominant pattern for the production of stops
in the hatta word type. As for vatnið type words, 8 cases are
preaspirated, 3 are produced as fricatives and 3 are unaspirated. There
are 6 occurrences of seks type words in BJ’s data, 4 instances with a ks
1 Since preaspiration duration is partly being plotted against itself, the trend lines should
not be taken to show statistically valid correlations (cf. section 4.1.3 above). However,
they do provide a visual indication of how preaspiration duration changes as a function
of the duration of the vowel + preaspiration sequence.
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