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

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dialect. With this in mind, Hansson advocates that, notwithstanding the question of the origin of these preaspirations (i.e., whether they were “weakened preglottalisations” or “breathed reinforcements”), all ON non-initial fortis stops should be reconstructed as preaspirated. This is what the evidence—the geographical spread of preaspiration as well as its phonological distribution in different dialects—suggests. Still, some objections can be raised against the idea that preaspiration was normative in ON. No two Nordic dialects with normative preaspiration exhibit exactly the same pattern of phonological distribution of preaspiration, and none of the dialects preserves the alleged ON pattern intact. The only aspect that is shared among all these dialects is the fact that the geminate fortes are preaspirated. When it comes to the development of the singleton fortes, and especially the development of clusters with fortis stops, the dialects have taken different paths. It has to be assumed that preaspiration was lost in “dialect specific” ways, i.e., that in each dialect, preaspiration was lost in certain contexts and not in others, and that these contexts were different for each dialect. However, these complex patterns of retention do not, per se, rule out the possibility that preaspiration was already normative in PN. A second objection can be raised. The fact that three dialects have postaspirated stops where neighbouring dialects have preaspirated stops cannot easily be accommodated in a scenario in which all stops are normatively preaspirated to begin with. If this were the case, one would have to assume that preaspirations became postaspirations through some kind of metathesis. As an explanation, this seems rather unsatisfactory. Also, if one accepts such a development, one could also propose that the stops were originally postaspirated and became preaspirations through metathesis. An alternative account that takes into account the phonetic factors that give rise to sound change as well as the mechanisms of change would be preferable (cf., e.g., discussion in Ohala 1993). How can we reconcile the archaic character of the geographical distribution of preaspiration with the observed diversity in the phonological distribution of preaspiration across dialects, as well as the existence of postaspirating dialects? A potential solution to these issues is hinted at by Helgason (1998, 1999), who suggested that non-normative preaspiration – 222 –
of the type we find in Central Standard Swedish provides the phonetic preconditions necessary for the development of normative preaspiration. What is proposed here is more specific. Preaspiration in PN was nonnormative, very much like what we see in CSw today, and indeed across all of Scandinavia (cf. discussion in Ch.3, section 3.6). A non-normative tendency to produce voiceless nasality before fortis stops must also have been present, although such a tendency has not been observed for CSw. Finally, sonorant voicelessness in lt and r + p, t, k clusters may already have been normative over large parts of Scandinavia in PN. In the following section, which is devoted to an attempt to reconstruct the production of stops in PN, it is shown that the synchronic data presented in Chapters 3 and 4 support this view. 5.2.2 The Proto-Nordic fortis ~ lenis contrast: reconstruction In this section, some suggestions will be made as to the phonetic expression of ON stops, based on the way in which they are reflected in the various Nordic languages and dialects. This reconstruction aims at describing the production of stops in the PN period (as defined at the beginning of this chapter), whereas the phonological contrasts discussed relate to the ON period in general. It should be kept in mind that the following account rests on the data and dialectal descriptions that have hitherto been gathered in the Nordic countries. Clearly, the extant literature does not cover all the dialectal variations that occur in stop production in the Nordic languages. Future dialect studies may throw more light on the problems discussed here. The lenis stops will be treated first. The data suggest that there is no essential difference in the expression of word-initial and word-medial lenis stops. For this reason, word-initial and word-medial lenes will be discussed together. The ON lenes tend to be reflected as voiceless only in some of the areas with normative preaspiration (i.e. Iceland, the Faroes, Jæren and Gräsö). Apparently, there are no other areas in which ON lenes turn up as voiceless (with the caveat that there may be dialects here or that are inadequately described in the literature). Voicing, then, seems to be the dominant pattern. Following Salmons (1992:130f) and Hansson – 223 –
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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.
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4.3.4 Summary and discussion As reg
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from the preaspiration noise itself
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 208 and 209: inte ‘not’ without the final vo
Page 210 and 211: ange for the remaining subjects is
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 230 and 231: Some Icelandic linguists seem to ha
Page 232 and 233: On a quite different note, Liberman
Page 236 and 237: (1997:114f), Iceland, the Faroes, J
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Page 242 and 243: higher degree of spectral tilt than
Page 244 and 245: a failure to apply a process of per
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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