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

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Some Icelandic linguists seem to have modelled their ON stop “ideal” on the Northern Icelandic dialect, rather than on Norwegian or Swedish—or Southern Icelandic, for that matter. This can be deduced from the tendency to view the Northern Icelandic dialect as more “original” than the Southern dialect (Böðvarsson 1951, Árnason 1986). Unlike Norwegian and Swedish, the Northern Icelandic dialect has “true” postaspiration in its word-medial singleton fortis stops, although the geminates are preaspirated. Thus, the ON orthographic representation appears to be better matched by the phonetic “surface forms” of Northern Icelandic than, for example, Southern Icelandic. We now have evidence of dialects with even “purer” postaspiration than Northern Icelandic. In the Western Åland dialect all ON fortis stops, even the word-medial geminates, are reflected as postaspirated (cf. Ch. 4, section 4.5.3). This is apparently also the case in the areas of Bjerkreim and Dalane in South-western Norway (cf. Ch. 4, section 4.5.2). One could argue that these dialects preserve the original ON pronunciation, postaspirated fortis stops that are free of any preaspiration. The problem with this idea is: If ON had normative postaspiration on all stops, initial and medial, then why are such stops so rare in Scandinavia today? In the Nordic languages, normative word-medial postaspiration is known only in three relatively small areas. In fact, areas with normative preaspiration outnumber the areas with normative postaspiration. In the remainder of Scandinavia, the tendency for nonnormative preaspiration seems much stronger than the tendency for postaspiration. From a typological perspective, it seems counter-intuitive that the relatively unmarked feature of postaspiration has almost entirely given way to the very marked feature of preaspiration, even if this preaspiration is non-normative. While this issue, as such, has not been considered previously, objections have still been raised, on completely different grounds, against the portrayal of the ON stop system as contrasting postaspirated vs. voiced stops. Chapman (1962) observed that the geographical distribution of Sw. terräng ‘terrain,’ even though the stress is on the second syllable, the word-initial stop is still aspirated. Likewise, in a word like metall ‘metal,’ also with the stress on the second syllable, the stop is postaspirated even though it is not word-initial. – 218 –
dialects with (normative) preaspiration indicated a pattern of retention rather than innovation (see also Salmons 1992:129–131 for a more systematic review of the issue). Thus, a straightforward way to account for the wide spread of dialects with (normative) preaspiration would be to assume that it was (i) present in earlier times, (ii) that it has disappeared in most of the Nordic language speaking area, and (iii) that it has been retained in a few geographically isolated or peripheral parts. However, the idea that preaspiration was already present in ON is not a new one. Marstrander (1932) suggested that the early PN clusters *mp, *nt, *ht 1 , and *nk became preaspirated geminate stops (i.e. *[hp], *[ht] and *[hk]) in some dialects. In other dialects (specifically most Eastern Scandinavian dialects) the nasal + stop sequences were retained, and in still other dialects the preaspirated geminates lost the preaspiration and became simple geminates. Marstrander proposed that ON geminate stops with sources other than the clusters enumerated above became preaspirated through the influence of these new preaspirated stops, perhaps because this provided a better distinction between the geminate and the singleton fortes. However, in light of the evidence now available, Marstrander’s account, although phonetically sound (cf., e.g., Matisoff 1975), appears untenable. First, there are dialects in which nasal + fortis stop sequences have been retained but which still have preaspirated stops, for example Gräsö & Kökar (cf. Ch. 3, sections 3.5.3–4; cf. also Hansson 1997:101– 2). 2 Also, Marstrander’s explanation cannot account for the fact that in some dialects, i.e. Faroese (Area 1) and Gräsö, the ON singletons are reflected as preaspirated. As noted, Marstrander’s ideas were later taken up by Chapman (1962). More recently, Page (1997) has, considering a wider range of Nordic data, revived the proposal and drawn comparisons with similar developments elsewhere, especially in Algonquian and Bantu languages. The fundamental problems of Marstrander’s original proposal, however, are not addressed. 1 Which was probably produced as [xt]. 2 Why Marstrander did not consider the Kökar dialect, which had been described in considerable detail by Karsten (1892), is not clear. – 219 –
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Preaspiration in the Nordic Languag
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PhD dissertation November 2002 Depa
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CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..........
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4.4.4 Preaspiration duration — SW
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the following pages. Thanks also to
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ported, but these should only be ta
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Finally, in Chapter 5, the patterns
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lock (ibid:267; boldface mine). Wea
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closure, decay time of the glottal
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2 DEFINITION AND TYPOLOGY 2.1 Defin
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and Finnish the word [lhti] ‘bay
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turn into ChV sequences in which V
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2.2 Linking preaspiration and sonor
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The similarity in gestural organisa
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The fact that both preaspiration an
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have normative preaspiration, other
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usually expressed as unaspirated an
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while clusters have developed into
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ted as voiceless unaspirated or pos
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y a middle-aged male speaker. In bo
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ut this is not true of the “stand
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2.6 Auditory constraints and the ra
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The second criticism of Bladon’s
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in discharge rates in the auditory
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number of languages that possess se
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and Lappic (Finno-Ugric). It has be
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For the sake of simplicity and luci
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‘apple,’ [vh] vatnið ‘the wa
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Table 3-1. Reflexes of Old Norse st
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In the Northern dialect, V is sligh
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Pind’s experiments as well as the
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In Area 2, where Tórshavn is situa
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in VC syllables in their speech, ju
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Table 3-4. Reflexes of ON stops in
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long vowel followed by a preaspirat
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grams), with the occasional aid of
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quantity system instead of the ON f
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ON flytja). There are no examples o
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Table 3-7. Reflexes of ON stops in
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whether she thinks that leaving out
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(Hede, Linsäll and Sveg) as well a
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(VC vs. VC). For two pairs (/tak/ v
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stop sequences that remain to be di
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do occur systematic linguistic diff
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Gräsö Forsmark Valö S W E D E N
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There are very few examples of clus
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Kökar, in the Åboland archipelago
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one hand, speakers have a tendency
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ecent studies that corroborate thes
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example, in a particular dialect, t
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does not give her segmentation crit
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Scotland and Ireland 1 [hphthk] 2 [
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approximately 140-150 ms in VC syll
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1. South Saami (Southern & Ume Saam
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1987a), Estonian (Engstrand & Krull
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Table 3-13. Reflexes of ON postvoca
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and Tórshavn Faroese data were eli
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ducing breathiness into the voice q
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Figure 4-3. An example of a sequenc
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4.2 Central Standard Swedish (CSw)
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very large, since postaspiration wa
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Several spectrographic examples of
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The data indicate that there is lit
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produced and in 9 cases there were
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To examine effects of syllable stru
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preaspiration for lexically stresse
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durations exceeding 120 ms, preaspi
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mately 70 ms. Just before the stop
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noise becomes audibly postalveolar
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As regards nasal + fortis stop sequ
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most of the remaining instances he
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(comparable to our taverna type) ha
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The CSw data have shown that word-i
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golf ‘golf,’ in which the utter
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o Figure 4-35. Subj. GT: […tv]
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word-initial lenis stop preceded by
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(i.e., short mVOffT and long mVOT).
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make it easier to refer to stops in
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[mh] ‘food’ is used, and for fu
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clear stop correlate, 26 (7%) had a
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All subjects considered, for lenis
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Figure 4-45(a) plots preaspiration
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cluster and 2 instances with a kt c
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4.3.2.5 Postaspiration duration Ins
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closure gesture. As the escape chan
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fricative constriction cannot be at
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is glottal during the first 50 ms.
Page 180 and 181: 4.3.4 Summary and discussion As reg
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Page 184 and 185: Many instances of word-medial forti
Page 186 and 187: In the Gräsö dialect, the sonoran
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Page 192 and 193: On the whole, the fortis vs. lenis
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Page 196 and 197: Icelandic listeners, even though th
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Page 200 and 201: Table 4-16. The findings of Indrið
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Page 212 and 213: For word-medial contexts data are a
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Page 216 and 217: 4.6 Summary and conclusions The sur
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Page 232 and 233: On a quite different note, Liberman
Page 234 and 235: dialect. With this in mind, Hansson
Page 236 and 237: (1997:114f), Iceland, the Faroes, J
Page 238 and 239: observed phonological distribution
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Page 242 and 243: higher degree of spectral tilt than
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Page 246 and 247: similar to that in CSw today. Some
Page 248 and 249: from t1 through t8, the productions
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Page 252 and 253: parameter such as VOT or F0, may th
Page 254 and 255: identity and paralinguistic informa
Page 256 and 257: —. 1974. “On the influence of N
Page 258 and 259: Gillies, William. 1993. “Scottish
Page 260 and 261: Johanson, Lars. 1998. “The histor
Page 262 and 263: Lyttkens, Ivar Adolf & Fredrik Amad
Page 264 and 265: —. 1995b. “Speaking rate, VOT a
Page 266 and 267: Stölten, Katrin. 2002. Dialektalit
Page 269: Department of Linguistics, Stockhol
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