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

Reitan 1930:67f). But, as with practically any aspect of pronunciation,
there is a great deal of language-, speaker- and context-dependent variaion
in the production of preaspiration. By having “usually glottal” in
parentheses, I want to emphasize that in the production of preaspiration
there is a wide range of possible (and regularly occurring) variants that
are not simple glottal fricatives. For example, the Faroese data discussed
in Chapter 4 show that there is considerable variation in the expression of
preaspiration. Thus the same speaker may express preaspiration a glottal
fricative [h] in one production of a word (Figure 4–49) and a uvular trill
[] in another instance of the same word (Figure 4–50).
As the first part of the definition implies, any consonant may, in
principle, be preaspirated. However, preaspiration seems to become normative
only before voiceless occlusions, and therefore most definitions
of preaspiration specify that the glottal friction noise (or “h-sound”, “puff
of breath,” etc.) occurs only before occlusions.
We now come to the second part of the definition, which states that
phonotactically within a language, the friction noise that we identify as
preaspiration should occur only before a limited subset of consonants.
This is usually not stated in definitions of preaspiration. It is, however,
stated here since in many languages there are sequences of h-sound +
occlusion that are not considered to be preaspirated stops. Instead, they
are thought of as clusters. 1
Consider Finnish and Icelandic, which have very similar phonetic
sequences by which a [h]-like sound (i.e., an aspiration) can be followed
by an occlusion. 2 For example, Icelandic has the word [lht] ‘made lazy’
1 One aspect that is not considered here is the importance of morphophonemic alternations
in the phonological interpretation of h-sounds (or any other sounds, for that matter).
Phonotactic distribution cannot, on its own, explain their links to other aspects of
a language’s phonology, even though the following discussion singles out phonotactics
as a major contributor. The present approach, therefore, requires some revisions,
taking morphophonemic considerations into account.
2 Through an auditory (and to a more limited extent, spectral) analysis of spontaneous
Finnish speech from two informants, I have not been able to detect any appreciable
difference between preaspirated stops in Icelandic and sequences of [h] and stop in
Finnish. In fact, barring some vowel differences, quite a number of the Finnish words
could very easily pass as Icelandic when listened to in isolation. Apparently, though,
Finnish has processes of “fortition” in its preaspirations similar to those we find in
Faroese (cf. Ch. 4, section 4.3.3).
– 12 –