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

Such characteristics in the formation of a speech sound, which unavoidably
occur as a result of the transition from or to an adjacent
speech sound, do not affect the notation. One thus writes: handla,
vattna, köpman, even though d, t and p in these words are not formed
in the same way as in händig, väta, köpa; nor are the p-sounds at the
beginning and the end of the word papp wholly identical, yet they are
nevertheless denoted with the same letter.
(Lundell, 1879:7; my translation)
Apparently, then, Lundell considered the difference between the initial
and final stops in the word papp to be a result of context, the former
being word-initial before a stressed vowel, the latter being word-final before
a pause. There are reasons to believe that Lundell and his contemporaries
would also have considered the difference between the two stops
in pappa to be the result of context. Possibly, the difference was thought
to be a result of stress: if the following vowel was stressed, the stop was
more forcefully articulated than if the vowel was unstressed.
For Norwegian, a similar story can be told. In Storm’s (1908) 1 overview
of Norwegian, most dialects have voiced and voiceless stops and no
apparent differences in degree of aspiration. However, Storm indicates
more clearly than does Lundell that in addition to voicing, consonants
(including stops) vary in their force of articulation:
One can, in fact, distinguish between two degrees of voicelessness,
weak or without stress: whispered [Hvisken], and strong or with
stress: puffed [Pust]. One can, for example, produce a strong f and a
weak f, a strong v and a weak v, so that only the strength of the sound,
and not its nature, changes.
(Storm, 1908:29; my translation)
In other (perhaps less influential) writings, differences in degree of
aspiration are accounted for more explicitly. For example, Lyttkens &
Wulff (1885:266ff) advocate four series of stops in their phonetic account
of Swedish: strongly aspirated p, t, k; weakly aspirated p, t, k;
voiceless (or half-voiced) unaspirated 2 , , ; and voiced b, d, g. In their
description, strongly aspirated stops occur mainly in word onsets before
stressed vowels, as well as in utterance-final position, e.g. påle, tall and
1 The part of Storm’s overview referred to here was originally published in 1884.
2 Or very weakly aspirated.
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