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

For comparison, let us consider postaspiration. Postaspiration also
incorporates a statement regarding the phonological conditioning of
h-sounds, although this is seldom expressed. Consider a language that
has an intervocalic sequence of a voiceless occlusion followed by (a release
burst and) an h-sound, i.e. a postaspirated stop. In most cases, linguists
would interpret the occlusion and h-sound as being a single phonological
unit (a phoneme), and call it an aspirated stop. One would seldom
see such a sequence analysed as a cluster, i.e. a stop followed by an /h/. 1
Thus, phonologically, such a language would almost inevitably be described
as having a voiceless aspirated stop series, rather than as having
voiceless stops and h-sounds that can build clusters. In this sense, the
h-sound of a postaspirated stop is affiliated with the preceding occlusion.
As with preaspirated stops, the reasons why postconsonantal
h-sounds are affiliated with the preceding occlusion seem to lie in the
phonotactics of h-sounds. It is well established that stop releases are a
relatively unavoidable effect in stop production. When pulmonic air flow
is cut off with an oral occlusion, intraoral air pressure increases. Once the
closure is released, the heightened intraoral pressure causes a sudden increase
of air flow across the releasing stricture, resulting in a noise that
we refer to as simply “burst” or “release.” The timing of voice onset can
vary as well. If voice onset is delayed relative to release, this results in
aspiration or ejectivity. In this sense aspiration occurs most “naturally”
after voiceless stops, slightly less so after other voiceless consonants, and
least “naturally” after voiced consonants. As a result, in terms of phonotactics,
we find that postaspirations in most languages tend to be restricted
to occurring after voiceless stops. Such a distribution makes it
more likely that, in a phonological analysis, the postaspirations are affiliated
with the preceding occlusion.
Of course, h-sounds after occlusions may come about by different
means. For example, through vowel deletion, CVhV sequences may
1 As we shall see later, Taba has sequences that can be analysed in this way (Bowden &
Hajek 1999). Undoubtedly, there are more languages in which this can be the case
(e.g., Arabic). One should also keep in mind that in languages that have a voiceless
stop series and an h-sound, one will surely find many examples in which these build a
phonetic sequence like the one described, but which would be analysed phonologically
as stop + /h/ clusters (i.e., two phonological units) with an intervening morpheme
boundary.
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