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

awareness of Icelandic preaspiration is evident at the beginning of the
20 th century, for example in the works of Hesselman (1905) and Storm
(1908). More detailed reviews of the phonological distribution of preaspiration
in Icelandic are found in later literature, perhaps most accessibly
in Thráinsson (1978).
In both the northern and southern varieties of Icelandic, as in most of
the languages and dialects reviewed in this chapter, ON pp, tt, kk are reflected
as preaspirated. As examples we have [lhp] 1 loppa ‘paw,’
[kœh] köttur ‘cat,’ [h] hnakki ‘(back of the) neck,’ and [hk]
drekka ‘to drink.’ ON word-medial and -final p, t, k are reflected differently
in Northern and Southern Icelandic. In Southern Icelandic, they are
usually realised as voiceless unaspirated as in [p] ‘drop,’ [l]
latur ‘lazy’ and [vk] vika ‘week.’ In Northern Icelandic these stops
are postaspirated, which is actually quite unusual for such stops in the
Nordic languages. We shall consider this type of postaspiration again
later (cf. Ch. 4, section 4.5). However, the remaining exposition of the
Icelandic stops pertains to the Southern dialect unless otherwise stated. A
more detailed description of the Northern dialect is given in Chapter 4,
section 4.5.1.
A distinction is made between ON p, t, k + r, j, v and pp, tt, kk +
r, j, v clusters. The former are reflected as voiceless unaspirated stops in
VC syllables, e.g. [npj] nepja ‘chill,’ [sj] sitja ‘sit,’ and
[vkv] vökva ‘to water.’ The latter are reflected as preaspirated stops
in VCC syllables, e.g. [mh] mettra ‘sated (gen. pl.),’ [sœhkv]
sökkva ‘sink,’ and [nhk] nokkra ‘a few.’ However, Icelandic does
not reflect a distinction between ON p, t, k + l, n and pp, tt, kk + l, n
clusters. 2 All such clusters are now preaspirated, e.g. [hpl] epli
1 The four-spoked asterisk indicates that the example is not from the recorded data, but
is instead my own rendering of a possible pronunciation for a word (see preceding
secton).
2 This is not to be taken as a statement that ON had a distinction between all possible
combinations of these consonants, merely that if ON had a distinction between a
particular pair, say kl and kkl, then Icelandic does not reflect that distinction. Note
also, that pm and tm clusters, which were uncommon (or nonexistent) in ON, are
preaspirated in Modern Icelandic, e.g. [khpmð] kaupmaður ‘merchant’ and
[hm] rytmi ‘rhythm.’ Note that in the former word, the preaspiration has come
about as the result of a loss of the morpheme boundary between kaup and maður.
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