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

ut this is not true of the “standardised” dialect used for UPSID. Consequently,
in UPSID, Norwegian has no preaspirated stops. This is quite
justifiable, since “on average” Norwegian does not have them. But what
if this is true for more languages than Norwegian? Perhaps preaspiration
does occur in dialects of various other languages in different geographical
locations but is overlooked in the “greater scheme” of things.
Here it may be useful to make a comparison between preaspirated
stops and clicks. Clicks are perceptually highly salient events. It is most
unlikely that even the most inexperienced linguist would fail to detect
them when constructing a phonetic or phonological account of a language.
At least—and in contrast to preaspirated stops—it is very difficult
to believe that there are languages (or dialects of languages) out
there teeming with click sounds that linguists have failed to spot.
Preaspiration is generally regarded as an extremely rare phenomenon.
However, it is possible that a great deal of the occurrences of preaspiration
in languages in general are being overlooked, since most detailed
acoustic phonetic studies have concentrated on the more standard
varieties of “mainstream” languages. And even when acoustic studies (as
opposed to auditory ones) on the production of stops are carried out,
there is no guarantee that preaspirations are even noted by researchers.
One reason for this is that field recordings often contain considerable
echo, which can be hard to distinguish from preaspiration in spectrographic
analysis. 1 Unless the recording is made in a properly soundtreated
room, preaspirations may be confused with the echo that is often
present in the stop silence of voiceless stops. Therefore, it is not unlikely
that the frequency of occurrence of preaspiration of the non-normative
type (like the ones reported for CSw, see Ch. 4.2.3) has been severely
underestimated.
It seems less likely that normative preaspirated stops have been overlooked
to the same degree. One must at least assume that a phonetic detail
that is an essential cue to a phonemic contrast is less likely to be
overlooked or disregarded than are phonetic details in general. However,
it is also quite possible that preaspirated stops have been registered as
1
For instance, one can detect some echo in the illustration of the Halh Mongolian stop
contrast in Figure 2–4(a).
– 33 –