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

‘apple,’ [vh] vatnið ‘the water’ and [œhkl] ökkli ‘ankle.’ The
clusters pt and kt as well as ppt and kkt are reflected as sequences of a
voiceless fricative and a stop, e.g. [sf] sleppti ‘released’ and
[vx] vakta ‘to guard.’ However, tk clusters have neither a fricative
nor preaspiration, but are instead voiceless and unaspirated, e.g.
[vks] vitkast ‘become wiser.’ 1
Finally, ON homomorphemic p, t + s and x are generally reflected as
sequences of fricative + [s], e.g. [fs] upsir ‘eaves,’ [pls] blessa
‘bless’ and [lxs] laxar ‘salmons.’ 2 For x, though, there is an ongoing
trend towards producing these as [ks] sequences, e.g. [lks] (cf.
Þráinsson & Árnason, 1992). Across a morpheme boundary, e.g. when
attaching the genitive -s to a noun, the general rule is that the -s is added
to the stem form without affecting it. Thus we get, for example, [hps]
hrapps as the genitive of [hp] hrappur ‘scoundrel,’ [ms] mats
from [m] mat ‘estimate’ and [lks] laks from [lk] lak ‘bed sheet.’
However, one sometimes hears that the vowel in such genitives gets
shortened, but the stop remains unaspirated. For [sp] skip ‘ship,’ for
example, the genitive can be both [sps] and [sps] (and actually
even [sfs]). The form **[shps] is not allowed, however.
ON bb, dd, gg are predominantly reflected as voiceless unaspirated,
as in [lp] labba ‘walk,’ [vi] vídd ‘width,’ [sk] skuggi ‘shadow,’
and [k] rugga ‘to rock.’ Modern Icelandic also has clusters with
lenis stops as the first elements, e.g. [npl] nafli ‘navel,’ [f] fellur
‘falls’ and [kl] rugla ‘to confuse.’ 3
From the preceding discussion we see that the presence of preaspiration
on stops in postvocalic position before voiced segments goes hand in
hand with the length of the preceding vowel. Preaspirated stops can
1 As Hansson (1997:36) points out, such clusters are sometimes produced with
preaspiration, and it is not uncommon to hear, for example, [nhkn] notkun ‘use
(noun).’
2 Whether these sequences actually had stops in ON is uncertain. Possibly, x in words
like lax ‘salmon’ was produced as [xs] while ks in þaks ‘roof (gen.)’ (where the -s is a
genitive marker, and k and s thus heteromorphemic) was produced as [ks].
3 In ON, lenis stops seldom preceded r, j, v, l, n. Genitive plural forms of adjectives are
a potential source for such sequences, e.g. tryggra, ‘loyal’ and hræddra ‘scared.’
Other examples include words such as hggva ‘hew,’ and, perhaps, uggla ‘owl.’
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