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

do occur systematic linguistic differences between different villages
within the Northern dialect, particularly between Norrboda and
Söderboda.
Eriksson’s remarks on preaspiration in the Gräsö dialect pertain to
the Northern dialect. It can be inferred from Eriksson’s discussion that he
regards preaspiration as a normative feature of the this dialect. 1 According
to Eriksson, preaspiration is generally present in fortis stops, and
he does not point out any exceptions to this pattern. The examples he
cites show that preaspiration occurs after both long and short vowels, for
example in bh ‘bottom’ and veh ‘wheat’ 2 . However, there are
no examples that show whether preaspiration occurs in other contexts
(i.e., when something other than a vowel follows the stop in ON).
According to both Eriksson and Schagerström, the Northern Gräsö
dialect reflects both ON singleton b, d, g 3 and geminate bb, dd, gg as
voiceless in both word-initially and word-medially. This description is
supported by Hesselman (1905:11), who comments that such stops are
voiceless in Northern Uppland, where Gräsö is situated.
The data analysed for the present work (see Ch. 4, section 4.4)
largely confirm Eriksson’s observations. Preaspiration is generally
present in intervocalic fortis stops, irrespective of whether the preceding
vowel is long or short. Furthermore, preaspiration is attested in the
clusters /kn/, /kr/, /tr/, /kl/ and /kt/. However, /ts/ and /ks/ clusters are not
preaspirated in the Gräsö dialect. As regards the lenis stops, only one
subject consistently produces voiceless variants, while the others tend to
produce voiced ones.
Furthermore, the data in Chapter 4 reveal that ON sequences of
sonorant and fortis stop (i.e., m, n, l, r + p, t, k) are reflected as halfvoiced,
half-voiceless in the Gräsö dialect. Thus we get, for example,
[femi] ‘fifty,’ [e] ‘green (neut.),’ [] ‘all (neut.),’ [pk]
‘precise,’ [mjœk] ‘to milk’ and [bjœk] ‘birches.’ The nasals and
laterals are simply divided in two halves, the initial half voiced and the
1
He even expresses surprise at the fact that Schagerström did not mention it in his
account of the dialect.
2
These transcriptions have been converted from the original version (Swedish Phonetic
Alphabet) to IPA notation with some minor simplifications.
3
These, one should keep in mind, did not occur in intervocalic position in ON.
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