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

the geminate lenes tended to be produced with voicing (or, at least, as
half-voiced) in the PN period.
Table 5–2 gives an overview of the phonetic expressions of PN stops
proposed above. There are some points of uncertainty in this representation.
Particularly, the question of whether the PN lenes were voiced or
voiceless is partly left open. This uncertainty may actually reflect the
variation present in the production of these stops in PN. Thus, there may
have been individual and contextual variation in their production that
renders a categorical dichotomy like voiced or voiceless inappropriate.
For example, it could be the case that the word-initial lenes tended to be
voiced in voiced contexts and voiceless in utterance-initial position. Or,
that the word-medial lenes, which were always geminates, tended to be
half-voiced. Such exact statements remain highly speculative.
Table 5–2. Overview of the proposed reconstruction of the phonetic realisation
of stops in PN. Parenthesised aspirations represent non-normative preaspiration
Word-initial Word-medial (& -final) postvocalic
Singleton Geminate
Fortis p t k p t k p t k
Lenis b/p d/t /k (/v) (ð) () b d
Fortis stops in clusters remain to be considered. It seems likely that lt
as well as r + p, t, k sequences were normatively voiceless in much of
Scandinavia already in the PN period. This can be inferred from the geographical
distribution of voiceless variants in such sequences in the
Nordic dialects, which has been mapped by Hansson (1997, 1999). The
map in Figure 4–98 shows that voicelessness in lt and r + p, t, k sequences
(marked as 2 or higher on the map) extends throughout a contiguous
area across Central and Northern Scandinavia, as well as the
Faroes and Iceland. Only in Southern Norway and Central and Southern
Sweden does it seem that such sequences do not contain a normatively
voiceless sonorant.
Normatively voiceless nasals are far less common. In fact, they only
occur in dialects that also have normatively preaspirated stops. In this
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