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

There are very few examples of clusters reflecting ON k(k)n.
Without preaspiration we find ukr ‘parishes,’ which is cited several
times, and with preaspiration we find hk ‘fog’ which appears
once. Similarly, words reflecting ON t(t)n are scarce. The words v
‘witness’ and v ‘the water’ are cited, both without preaspiration.
There are no “voiced versions” of these clusters.
ON clusters with two consecutive stops (essentially pt and kt), as
well as ks clusters, have no preaspiration in the Kökar dialect. ON pt is
reflected as [f], e.g. f ‘bought,’ while kt is reflected as [k], as in
vk ‘weight.’ ON ks clusters are reflected variously as [ks] or [k],
e.g. æks ‘six’ and væk ‘grow.’
To sum up, the Kökar dialect has no distinction between preaspirated
and unaspirated stops for /tn/, /tl/, /kt/, /pt/ and /ks/ clusters. They are
always unaspirated. For //, /kn/ and /kl/ there is a distinction between
preaspirated and unaspirated variants, which seems to reflect an ON
quantity distinction. Since these clusters also have voiced variants, there
is a three-way distinction between voiced, voiceless unaspirated and
voiceless preaspirated clusters, as exemplified by u, hk and
rhk. As was pointed out above, there is also a three-way distinction
in non-clusters.
The Kökar dialect also has voiceless sonorants before ON p, t, k.
Karsten (1892:10, 37f) describes these as voiced during the initial part
and voiceless in the latter part and comments that he feels that /l/ and /r/
have a greater degree of voicelessness than the nasals, but that they still
are voiced at the onset. As examples of voiceless sonorants we find
væhp ‘to throw,’ h ‘church,’ v ‘to starve,’
mjhk ‘milk,’ jhp ‘to help,’ vir ‘winter,’ vi
‘angle,’ ik ‘ham, buttock’ and fæm ‘fifteen.’ The Gräsö
dialect (see section 3.5.3) has voicelessness in sonorants in such contexts
which are very similar to those described for the Kökar dialect, and I
have used the Gräsö data as an aid in interpreting Karsten’s transcriptions
in these cases. 1 ON rt is not reflected with a voiceless sonorant but
1 Karsten uses a wedge symbol to indicate voicelessness in these sequences, e.g.
. In this particular case, for instance, based on what we observe in the Gräsö
dialect, my interpretation is that first a voiced flap is produced and then follows a
period of preaspiration.
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