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

In most respects, the general description of the distribution of stop
variants in Swedish has not changed from the latter half of the 19 th century,
and the difference between word-initial and -medial fortis stops still
appears to be regarded as a result of context, although this is seldom
stated explicitly. For example, Löfqvist & Yoshioka (1980) give the following
account:
Swedish voiceless stops are aspirated in prestress position and
unaspirated when they immediately follow a stressed vowel or /s/.
Although this difference between aspirated and unaspirated voiceless
stops is not phonemic in Swedish, when aspiration occurs it serves as
one of the cues for the distinction between voiced and voiceless stops,
since the former are always unaspirated. In addition, the presence or
absence of aspiration in voiceless stops in some contexts marks the
location of a word boundary.
(Löfqvist & Yoshioka, 1980:793f)
The last remark, that aspiration in stops can be an indicator of a word
boundary, appears to be a response to examples in which the placement
of a word boundary decides whether a stop is aspirated. For example,
Löfqvist & Yoshioka investigated word pairs such as Liszt pilar vs. Lis
spelar, in which the former p is aspirated and the latter is not. The effect
of word boundary placement had been noted earlier (cf. Lyttkens 1898:25,
Noreen 1918-24:24-28, Elert 1957, Gårding 1967), although differences
in the degree of aspiration as such are not specifically mentioned.
Obviously, the characterisation of a stop system in terms of parameters
such as aspiration and voicing is a simplification, especially since it
has been demonstrated that a large number of different acoustic cues are
relevant for the perception of stop contrasts. Reviewing the research on
the perceptual categorisation of initial stops in English, Diehl and
Kluender (1987) identify ten acoustic parameters that are relevant for
stop category judgements. These include voice-onset time, duration of
voiced-formant transitions, onset frequencies (and directions) of first,
second and third formants, duration of aspiration, and intensity of aspiration.
For stop contrasts in word-medial position in English, Lisker (1978)
has compiled an even longer list of cues, including the presence or absence
of low-frequency buzz during the closure interval, duration of closure,
first-formant offset frequency before closure, voice-onset time after
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