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

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these terms are used mostly in conjunction with aspiration (pre- and postaspiration), but ideally should be generally applicable in phonetics. Still, the definition will undoubtedly show weaknesses in some situations, since the terms it employs, “phonetic trait” and “dialect,” are themselves not always easily defined. Nonetheless, the distinction between normative and non-normative traits has been found useful in discussing aspiration. The linguistic groups focused on here are defined on the basis of geographical and linguistic criteria, similar to those used to establish “traditional” dialectal divisions. These groups are Southern Icelandic, Northern Icelandic, Tórshavn Faroese, Northern Gräsö dialect, Central Standard Åland dialect and Central Standard Swedish (henceforth CSw). In all these dialects, the fortis stop series has normative postaspiration in certain contexts, which vary slightly depending on dialect. Common to all is postaspiration on fortis stops in word-initial position and before stressed vowels. These stops can be said to be normatively postaspirated, since a failure to aspirate properly would be interpreted as deviant (e.g., as with a foreign accent) by the native speakers of the dialect. They contrast with lenis stops, which lack postaspiration (in the corresponding positions) and which may be voiced or voiceless depending on dialect. This yields minimal pairs such as: Faroese [la] 1 [la] (‘to speak’ vs ‘to wane’) Icelandic [p] [p] (‘pair’ vs. ‘bar’) CSw [œm] [œm] (‘to empty’ vs. ‘to judge’) [kn] [n] (‘hurricane’ vs. ‘organ’) The two stop series are traditionally referred to as fortis and lenis, and in the absence of unifying phonetic criteria for these stop contrasts (a fact that becomes even more evident in the following paragraph), the traditional terminology will be adhered to. Word-internally, especially intervocalically after stressed vowels, the expression of fortis stops in these dialects is much more complex. Some 1 The four-spoked asterisk is used to indicate that the example being transcribed does not occur in the recorded data, but is an “invention” of the author. This is explained in more detail in section 3.1. – 22 –
have normative preaspiration, others have normative postaspiration and in some cases one finds normatively unaspirated stops. CSw sets itself apart from the other dialects in terms of aspiration in these medial stops. In CSw, such stops are frequently preaspirated in the speech of some informants, while others tend to preaspirate much less or hardly at all. Therefore, the preaspiration found in CSw can be said to be nonnormative. That is, the absence of preaspiration in CSw does not lead to a pronunciation that is considered deviant, even though preaspiration is a regular feature for many speakers. One might wonder whether the concept of free variation could not replace non-normative in this discussion. Indeed, the two terms have very similar connotations. However, note that non-normative variation does not necessarily imply that the variation is free. In the data on CSw (discussed in greater detail in Ch. 4), there is one speaker who is particularly prone to producing fortis stops with preaspiration. In fact, this speaker almost always produces such stops with preaspiration. For this speaker, then, it is difficult to say that preaspiration in fortis stops in her speech has “free” variation. At the same time, her preaspirations are not normative, since there are speakers who regularly produce fortis stops with little or no preaspiration. However, if the reader feels that “free variation” covers this sort of variation, then the terms are interchangeable. 2.4 The geographical distribution of preaspiration Hansson (1997) gives a detailed overview of the literature on reported occurrences of preaspiration. The following account of the known geographical distribution of preaspiration draws heavily on Hansson’s study. In some cases I try to evaluate these reports in terms of whether the language in question is an hC-cluster type or a preaspiration type language, as well as whether the preaspiration should be considered normative or non-normative. Also, some languages not included in Hansson’s overview are discussed. Outside Europe, there are very few languages in which preaspiration has been reported to occur. A total of 15 languages are discussed here, but in very few of these cases can we reliably conclude that what is being – 23 –
Page 1: Preaspiration in the Nordic Languag
Page 4 and 5: PhD dissertation November 2002 Depa
Page 7 and 8: CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..........
Page 9: 4.4.4 Preaspiration duration — SW
Page 12 and 13: the following pages. Thanks also to
Page 14 and 15: ported, but these should only be ta
Page 16 and 17: Finally, in Chapter 5, the patterns
Page 18 and 19: lock (ibid:267; boldface mine). Wea
Page 20 and 21: closure, decay time of the glottal
Page 23 and 24: 2 DEFINITION AND TYPOLOGY 2.1 Defin
Page 25 and 26: and Finnish the word [lhti] ‘bay
Page 27 and 28: turn into ChV sequences in which V
Page 29 and 30: 2.2 Linking preaspiration and sonor
Page 31 and 32: The similarity in gestural organisa
Page 33: The fact that both preaspiration an
Page 37 and 38: usually expressed as unaspirated an
Page 39 and 40: while clusters have developed into
Page 41 and 42: ted as voiceless unaspirated or pos
Page 43 and 44: y a middle-aged male speaker. In bo
Page 45 and 46: ut this is not true of the “stand
Page 47 and 48: 2.6 Auditory constraints and the ra
Page 49 and 50: The second criticism of Bladon’s
Page 51 and 52: in discharge rates in the auditory
Page 53: number of languages that possess se
Page 56 and 57: and Lappic (Finno-Ugric). It has be
Page 58 and 59: For the sake of simplicity and luci
Page 60 and 61: ‘apple,’ [vh] vatnið ‘the wa
Page 62 and 63: Table 3-1. Reflexes of Old Norse st
Page 64 and 65: In the Northern dialect, V is sligh
Page 66 and 67: Pind’s experiments as well as the
Page 68 and 69: In Area 2, where Tórshavn is situa
Page 70 and 71: in VC syllables in their speech, ju
Page 72 and 73: Table 3-4. Reflexes of ON stops in
Page 74 and 75: long vowel followed by a preaspirat
Page 76 and 77: grams), with the occasional aid of
Page 78 and 79: quantity system instead of the ON f
Page 80 and 81: ON flytja). There are no examples o
Page 82 and 83: Table 3-7. Reflexes of ON stops in
Page 84 and 85:
whether she thinks that leaving out
Page 86 and 87:
(Hede, Linsäll and Sveg) as well a
Page 88 and 89:
(VC vs. VC). For two pairs (/tak/ v
Page 90 and 91:
stop sequences that remain to be di
Page 92 and 93:
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
Page 100 and 101:
one hand, speakers have a tendency
Page 102 and 103:
ecent studies that corroborate thes
Page 104 and 105:
example, in a particular dialect, t
Page 106 and 107:
does not give her segmentation crit
Page 108 and 109:
Scotland and Ireland 1 [hphthk] 2 [
Page 110 and 111:
approximately 140-150 ms in VC syll
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1. South Saami (Southern & Ume Saam
Page 114 and 115:
1987a), Estonian (Engstrand & Krull
Page 116 and 117:
Table 3-13. Reflexes of ON postvoca
Page 118 and 119:
and Tórshavn Faroese data were eli
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ducing breathiness into the voice q
Page 122 and 123:
Figure 4-3. An example of a sequenc
Page 124 and 125:
4.2 Central Standard Swedish (CSw)
Page 126 and 127:
very large, since postaspiration wa
Page 128 and 129:
Several spectrographic examples of
Page 130 and 131:
The data indicate that there is lit
Page 132 and 133:
produced and in 9 cases there were
Page 134 and 135:
To examine effects of syllable stru
Page 136 and 137:
preaspiration for lexically stresse
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durations exceeding 120 ms, preaspi
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mately 70 ms. Just before the stop
Page 142 and 143:
noise becomes audibly postalveolar
Page 144 and 145:
As regards nasal + fortis stop sequ
Page 146 and 147:
most of the remaining instances he
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(comparable to our taverna type) ha
Page 150 and 151:
The CSw data have shown that word-i
Page 152 and 153:
golf ‘golf,’ in which the utter
Page 154 and 155:
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).
Page 160 and 161:
make it easier to refer to stops in
Page 162 and 163:
[mh] ‘food’ is used, and for fu
Page 164 and 165:
clear stop correlate, 26 (7%) had a
Page 166 and 167:
All subjects considered, for lenis
Page 168 and 169:
Figure 4-45(a) plots preaspiration
Page 170 and 171:
cluster and 2 instances with a kt c
Page 172 and 173:
4.3.2.5 Postaspiration duration Ins
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closure gesture. As the escape chan
Page 176 and 177:
fricative constriction cannot be at
Page 178 and 179:
is glottal during the first 50 ms.
Page 180 and 181:
4.3.4 Summary and discussion As reg
Page 182 and 183:
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
Page 188 and 189:
that the presence of a voiceless na
Page 190 and 191:
of this type as well. Remarkably, t
Page 192 and 193:
On the whole, the fortis vs. lenis
Page 194 and 195:
120 100 80 60 40 20 0 120 100 80 60
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Icelandic listeners, even though th
Page 198 and 199:
discussion of possible reasons for
Page 200 and 201:
Table 4-16. The findings of Indrið
Page 202 and 203:
these speakers will henceforth be r
Page 204 and 205:
lenes are often produced with a voi
Page 206 and 207:
Nasal + stop sequences in the Weste
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
Page 214 and 215:
instances may have preaspiration on
Page 216 and 217:
4.6 Summary and conclusions The sur
Page 218 and 219:
that the ON word-initial lenes have
Page 220 and 221:
dialect in the Åland archipelago.
Page 222 and 223:
clear that ON m, n + p, t, k sequen
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gradual process rather than a leap
Page 226 and 227:
stops that we find in, for example,
Page 228 and 229:
oth found in V()C syllables, but ar
Page 230 and 231:
Some Icelandic linguists seem to ha
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
Page 240 and 241:
sense, preaspiration is linked more
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
Page 250 and 251:
ation, voiceless nasality before fo
Page 252 and 253:
parameter such as VOT or F0, may th
Page 254 and 255:
identity and paralinguistic informa
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—. 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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Preaspiration in the Nordic Languages: Synchronic and Diachronic ...

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