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

sense, preaspiration is linked more intimately with nasal voicelessness
than with voicelessness in laterals and r-sounds. However, note that
some dialects have preaspirated stops but no voiceless nasals. Also, unlike
preaspiration, there does not seem to be a strong non-normative tendency
for early voice offset in nasals preceding fortis stops in Scandinavia
today.
A basic premise in this discussion is the belief that phonetic changes
have their roots in the pool of synchronic phonetic variation present in a
language (Ohala 1989, 1993; Lindblom et al. 1995). Thus, it can be assumed
that voiceless nasality was present, in some form, as a precondition
for the development of the normatively voiceless nasals we now find
in various Nordic dialects. It is suggested here that, in PN, the relative
freedom of timing of voice offset and stop closure in the production of
vowel + fortis stop sequences extended to stops following a nasal.
5.3 Where does preaspiration come from?
In Chapter 2, section 2.3, it was stated that a normative trait is present for
all members of the group of speakers under examination. Thus, when native
speakers of Icelandic produce the word nótt ‘night,’ in a moderate
tempo and in isolation, we expect to find, invariably and for all speakers,
that the stop is preaspirated. Non-normative traits, however, count as
constituent parts of phonetic variation. We do not expect that all speakers
of Central Standard Swedish produce the word natt ‘night’ with a preaspirated
stop, but, based on our experience of Swedish speakers, we expect
that some will. For speakers of Swedish, the production of a vowel
+ stop sequence varies in a way that it does not for speakers of Icelandic.
What is the source of this phonetic variation? For a given group of
speakers, what decides the limits of the variation present in the production
of a stop, an [s] or a back, close, rounded vowel? One delimiting
factor may be the principle of adaptive dispersion (TAD) (Liljencrants &
Lindblom 1972, Lindblom 1986). In this model, speech is produced in
anthropophonic space. As the size of a phonological system, for example
a vowel inventory, increases, TAD predicts that the proximity of the
units within the system will also increase, but in such a way that sufficient
contrast is preserved. As a consequence, the room for variability
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