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

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“normal” unaspirated, voiceless stops. For Halh Mongolian, for example, which Svantesson & Karlsson (2002) have shown has normatively preaspirated stops, two divergent descriptions of the “strong” vs. “weak” contrast exist. According to Svantesson & Karlsson, Ramstedt (1902) described the strong series as postaspirated in word-initial position, and pre- and postaspirated in word-medial position. This description is echoed in Vladimircov (1929), Poppe (1936, 1951) and Sanzheev (1953). However, it seems that there is a more widespread belief that the strong vs. weak contrast is expressed as voiceless vs. voiced stop in all positions. This characterisation of the contrast can be found in, for example, Rudnev (1905), Hattori (1943) and Todaeva (1951). Thus, although Ramstedt had correctly identified the occurrence of preaspirated stops in Halh Mongolian, this did not prevent the less correct description of stops such as simply voiceless unaspirated (contrasting with voiced stops) from gaining ground. The case of Halh Mongolian preaspiration suggests that preaspiration is particularly difficult to detect in impressionistic analysis. It is only through the instrumental analysis of Svantesson & Karlsson that we can confirm that there are preaspirated stops in Halh Mongolian. Since most existing phonematic descriptions of languages are based on impressionistic analyses, including those that make up the bulk of the UPSID data, one may begin to suspect that preaspirated stops are far more frequent in the world’s languages than has hitherto been thought. But even if normatively preaspirated stops occur more frequently than was previously believed, they may still be relatively rare. And, as I have claimed, preaspiration seems to be a subtle, almost evasive phonetic trait that tends to escape detection in auditory analysis. The apparent rarity and elusiveness of preaspirated stops may have to do with the perceptual characteristics of the preaspiration noise. Is it hard to hear preaspiration? And is this the reason for its apparent rarity? These questions are considered in the following section. – 34 –
2.6 Auditory constraints and the rarity of preaspiration The apparent rarity of normative preaspiration in the world’s languages has not received much attention in the literature. One of the few extant accounts that deals with the issue of on an empirical basis is Bladon’s (1986) explanation of the rarity of preaspiration in terms of auditory constraints. Drawing mostly on the research of Delgutte (1980, 1982), Bladon has established a set of general principles of audition. These principles act as constraints on the possible sound patterns of languages. Sound patterns that, in some way, provide good perceptual discriminability are favoured over those that result in poor discriminability. In this way, Bladon tries to explain some general tendencies in the sound patterns in languages. Of the constraints proposed by Bladon, mainly two are of concern here: On/off response asymmetry and Short-term adaptation. As for On/off response asymmetry, Bladon proposes that “spectral changes whose response in the auditory nerve is mainly onset of firing are much more perceptually salient than those producing an offset.” Using preaspiration as an example, Bladon points out that any temporal information for the preaspiration relies entirely on the detection of offsets, rather than onsets, which is poor in terms of salience. Postaspiration, on the other hand, is optimally salient from this point of view, since it is preceded by a silence. And as regards Short-term adaptation, Bladon refers to Delgutte’s (1980, 1982) work, saying that “after a rapid onset of auditory nerve discharge at a particular frequency, there is a decay to a moderate level of discharge even though the same speech sound is continuing to be produced.” Turning to preaspiration again, Bladon notes that, unlike postaspiration, preaspiration is subject to widespread short-term adaptation. This results from the fact that a vowel and a following preaspiration have very similar spectral characteristics and therefore there is little chance of neural recovery before the onset of preaspiration. Thus, preaspiration takes pride of place among Bladon’s examples of sound patterns that are bad for audition. In fact, Bladon describes preaspiration as an “auditory phonetic dinosaur” that could hardly be less – 35 –
Page 1: Preaspiration in the Nordic Languag
Page 4 and 5: PhD dissertation November 2002 Depa
Page 7 and 8: CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..........
Page 9: 4.4.4 Preaspiration duration — SW
Page 12 and 13: the following pages. Thanks also to
Page 14 and 15: ported, but these should only be ta
Page 16 and 17: Finally, in Chapter 5, the patterns
Page 18 and 19: lock (ibid:267; boldface mine). Wea
Page 20 and 21: closure, decay time of the glottal
Page 23 and 24: 2 DEFINITION AND TYPOLOGY 2.1 Defin
Page 25 and 26: and Finnish the word [lhti] ‘bay
Page 27 and 28: turn into ChV sequences in which V
Page 29 and 30: 2.2 Linking preaspiration and sonor
Page 31 and 32: The similarity in gestural organisa
Page 33 and 34: The fact that both preaspiration an
Page 35 and 36: have normative preaspiration, other
Page 37 and 38: usually expressed as unaspirated an
Page 39 and 40: while clusters have developed into
Page 41 and 42: ted as voiceless unaspirated or pos
Page 43 and 44: y a middle-aged male speaker. In bo
Page 45: ut this is not true of the “stand
Page 49 and 50: The second criticism of Bladon’s
Page 51 and 52: in discharge rates in the auditory
Page 53: number of languages that possess se
Page 56 and 57: and Lappic (Finno-Ugric). It has be
Page 58 and 59: For the sake of simplicity and luci
Page 60 and 61: ‘apple,’ [vh] vatnið ‘the wa
Page 62 and 63: Table 3-1. Reflexes of Old Norse st
Page 64 and 65: In the Northern dialect, V is sligh
Page 66 and 67: Pind’s experiments as well as the
Page 68 and 69: In Area 2, where Tórshavn is situa
Page 70 and 71: in VC syllables in their speech, ju
Page 72 and 73: Table 3-4. Reflexes of ON stops in
Page 74 and 75: long vowel followed by a preaspirat
Page 76 and 77: grams), with the occasional aid of
Page 78 and 79: quantity system instead of the ON f
Page 80 and 81: ON flytja). There are no examples o
Page 82 and 83: Table 3-7. Reflexes of ON stops in
Page 84 and 85: whether she thinks that leaving out
Page 86 and 87: (Hede, Linsäll and Sveg) as well a
Page 88 and 89: (VC vs. VC). For two pairs (/tak/ v
Page 90 and 91: stop sequences that remain to be di
Page 92 and 93: do occur systematic linguistic diff
Page 94 and 95: Gräsö Forsmark Valö S W E D E N
Page 96 and 97:
There are very few examples of clus
Page 98 and 99:
Kökar, in the Åboland archipelago
Page 100 and 101:
one hand, speakers have a tendency
Page 102 and 103:
ecent studies that corroborate thes
Page 104 and 105:
example, in a particular dialect, t
Page 106 and 107:
does not give her segmentation crit
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Scotland and Ireland 1 [hphthk] 2 [
Page 110 and 111:
approximately 140-150 ms in VC syll
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1. South Saami (Southern & Ume Saam
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1987a), Estonian (Engstrand & Krull
Page 116 and 117:
Table 3-13. Reflexes of ON postvoca
Page 118 and 119:
and Tórshavn Faroese data were eli
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ducing breathiness into the voice q
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Figure 4-3. An example of a sequenc
Page 124 and 125:
4.2 Central Standard Swedish (CSw)
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very large, since postaspiration wa
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Several spectrographic examples of
Page 130 and 131:
The data indicate that there is lit
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produced and in 9 cases there were
Page 134 and 135:
To examine effects of syllable stru
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preaspiration for lexically stresse
Page 138 and 139:
durations exceeding 120 ms, preaspi
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mately 70 ms. Just before the stop
Page 142 and 143:
noise becomes audibly postalveolar
Page 144 and 145:
As regards nasal + fortis stop sequ
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most of the remaining instances he
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(comparable to our taverna type) ha
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The CSw data have shown that word-i
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golf ‘golf,’ in which the utter
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o Figure 4-35. Subj. GT: […tv]
Page 156 and 157:
word-initial lenis stop preceded by
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(i.e., short mVOffT and long mVOT).
Page 160 and 161:
make it easier to refer to stops in
Page 162 and 163:
[mh] ‘food’ is used, and for fu
Page 164 and 165:
clear stop correlate, 26 (7%) had a
Page 166 and 167:
All subjects considered, for lenis
Page 168 and 169:
Figure 4-45(a) plots preaspiration
Page 170 and 171:
cluster and 2 instances with a kt c
Page 172 and 173:
4.3.2.5 Postaspiration duration Ins
Page 174 and 175:
closure gesture. As the escape chan
Page 176 and 177:
fricative constriction cannot be at
Page 178 and 179:
is glottal during the first 50 ms.
Page 180 and 181:
4.3.4 Summary and discussion As reg
Page 182 and 183:
from the preaspiration noise itself
Page 184 and 185:
Many instances of word-medial forti
Page 186 and 187:
In the Gräsö dialect, the sonoran
Page 188 and 189:
that the presence of a voiceless na
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of this type as well. Remarkably, t
Page 192 and 193:
On the whole, the fortis vs. lenis
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120 100 80 60 40 20 0 120 100 80 60
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Icelandic listeners, even though th
Page 198 and 199:
discussion of possible reasons for
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Table 4-16. The findings of Indrið
Page 202 and 203:
these speakers will henceforth be r
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lenes are often produced with a voi
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Nasal + stop sequences in the Weste
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inte ‘not’ without the final vo
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ange for the remaining subjects is
Page 212 and 213:
For word-medial contexts data are a
Page 214 and 215:
instances may have preaspiration on
Page 216 and 217:
4.6 Summary and conclusions The sur
Page 218 and 219:
that the ON word-initial lenes have
Page 220 and 221:
dialect in the Åland archipelago.
Page 222 and 223:
clear that ON m, n + p, t, k sequen
Page 224 and 225:
gradual process rather than a leap
Page 226 and 227:
stops that we find in, for example,
Page 228 and 229:
oth found in V()C syllables, but ar
Page 230 and 231:
Some Icelandic linguists seem to ha
Page 232 and 233:
On a quite different note, Liberman
Page 234 and 235:
dialect. With this in mind, Hansson
Page 236 and 237:
(1997:114f), Iceland, the Faroes, J
Page 238 and 239:
observed phonological distribution
Page 240 and 241:
sense, preaspiration is linked more
Page 242 and 243:
higher degree of spectral tilt than
Page 244 and 245:
a failure to apply a process of per
Page 246 and 247:
similar to that in CSw today. Some
Page 248 and 249:
from t1 through t8, the productions
Page 250 and 251:
ation, voiceless nasality before fo
Page 252 and 253:
parameter such as VOT or F0, may th
Page 254 and 255:
identity and paralinguistic informa
Page 256 and 257:
—. 1974. “On the influence of N
Page 258 and 259:
Gillies, William. 1993. “Scottish
Page 260 and 261:
Johanson, Lars. 1998. “The histor
Page 262 and 263:
Lyttkens, Ivar Adolf & Fredrik Amad
Page 264 and 265:
—. 1995b. “Speaking rate, VOT a
Page 266 and 267:
Stölten, Katrin. 2002. Dialektalit
Page 269:
Department of Linguistics, Stockhol
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