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

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suited for communicative purposes. This, he claims, is reflected in UPSID, in which “from the 317 languages […] preaspiration is attested in only 2 or 3.” 1 Bladon’s account is convincing and has intuitive appeal for those that feel, as I do, that preaspiration is a fairly unobtrusive phonetic feature that tends to escape detection. However, his claims should not be viewed uncritically, and there are problems with his approach. First, Bladon relies on UPSID for information on the frequency of occurrence of the sound pattern [h] + stop (i.e. pre-occlusive aspirations). As was discussed in the preceding section, a problem with UPSID is its possible underestimation of the frequency of preaspiration occurrence. A more serious problem is the fact that UPSID does not contain any information regarding the frequency of occurrence of hC clusters. 2 The auditory constraints Bladon proposes should apply to any VhC sequence, not only to sequences in which the h-sound happens to get classified as preaspiration (cf. discussion in section 2.1). It is in this way that the frequency of occurrence of pre-occlusive aspirations—i.e., h-sounds in hC clusters and preaspirations—is underestimated (see also Hansson (1997:9). For comparison, consider if one were investigating the frequency of occurrence of pre- and post-affricated [t], e.g., [t] and [t]. UPSID tells us that 41% of languages have [t], but no pre-affricated stop [t] whatsoever is found—it is not even part of the UPSID segment inventory. We cannot conclude from this that the sequence [t] is auditorily inept. The reason why [t] does not show up in UPSID is not that it does not occur in the languages of the world, but rather that when it does occur, linguists seem to analyse it as a cluster instead of a pre-affricate “segment.” 1 Bladon used a version of the UPSID database that contained phonological inventories from 317 languages (cf. Maddieson 1984). In the updated UPSID (Maddieson & Precoda 1989), which has inventories from 451 languages, only one language has preaspiration. 2 It is difficult to obtain reliable estimates on how many languages allow hC clusters. The ones I am aware of include Finnish, Menomini, Taba, some varieties of Spanish (esp. American), Arabic (as well as many languages that have borrowed from Arabic, e.g. Urdu, Persian and Turkish), many of the Algonquian languages, Comanche and Mono, as well as some Oto-Manguean languages. This list is hardly exhaustive. My hunch is that the languages in which pre-occlusive aspirations are most appropriately analysed as clusters outnumber the languages in which they are most appropriately analysed as preaspirated stops. – 36 –
The second criticism of Bladon’s approach concerns discharge rates in the auditory nerve. Since Bladon limits his discussion to a comparison between preaspiration and postaspiration, one may lose sight of the fact that not all speech sounds have high neural discharge rates at their onset. In fact, it is a general property of voiceless fricatives that they have long rise-times and therefore generate only modest surges in neural discharge rate at their onsets (Delgutte, 1980). Most likely, these surges are hardly noticeable at all for sounds with low SPLs, such as [x], [f] and [h]. By comparing sequences such as [aft] and [aht], one would find only modest differences in neural discharge rates (e.g., due to the labiodental place cue in the vowel), certainly much smaller than the differences one might observe for sequences such as [th] and [ht]. Thus even if the presence of a high neural discharge rate may provide some auditory enhancement to a sound, this does not entail that the absence of such a peak of neural discharges indicates that a sound is auditorily inept. Furthermore, a surge in neural discharge rates for a particular speech sound cannot be considered an invariant property of that speech sound, because the preceding context is bound to vary and neural recovery (from a state of adaptation) is relatively slow. Thus Delgutte (1980) showed, for example, that onset discharge rates for specific nerve fibre channels of the vowel [] varied depending on whether the preceding segment was the nasal [m] or the stop [b]. 1 Most important of all, however, is that it has not been effectively demonstrated that a given increase in discharge rates in the auditory nerve leads to a comparable increase in perceptual salience. We should keep in mind that although Delgutte’s findings reveal that abrupt onsets are much more clearly marked than are gradual onsets at the level of the auditory nerve, they do not indicate to us the differences in auditory salience between abrupt and gradual onset. For such indications, Delgutte’s experiments on anaesthetised cats must be supplemented by more subjective experiments on human listeners. Such experiments have not been conclusive. Lacerda (1987) performed a series of experiments designed to determine whether nonadapted auditory nerve responses (i.e., with high neural discharge rates) 1 The original has [a], here interpreted as an open central unrounded vowel. – 37 –
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 and 46: ut this is not true of the “stand
Page 47: 2.6 Auditory constraints and the ra
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
Page 108 and 109:
Scotland and Ireland 1 [hphthk] 2 [
Page 110 and 111:
approximately 140-150 ms in VC syll
Page 112 and 113:
1. South Saami (Southern & Ume Saam
Page 114 and 115:
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
Page 120 and 121:
ducing breathiness into the voice q
Page 122 and 123:
Figure 4-3. An example of a sequenc
Page 124 and 125:
4.2 Central Standard Swedish (CSw)
Page 126 and 127:
very large, since postaspiration wa
Page 128 and 129:
Several spectrographic examples of
Page 130 and 131:
The data indicate that there is lit
Page 132 and 133:
produced and in 9 cases there were
Page 134 and 135:
To examine effects of syllable stru
Page 136 and 137:
preaspiration for lexically stresse
Page 138 and 139:
durations exceeding 120 ms, preaspi
Page 140 and 141:
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
Page 146 and 147:
most of the remaining instances he
Page 148 and 149:
(comparable to our taverna type) ha
Page 150 and 151:
The CSw data have shown that word-i
Page 152 and 153:
golf ‘golf,’ in which the utter
Page 154 and 155:
o Figure 4-35. Subj. GT: […tv]
Page 156 and 157:
word-initial lenis stop preceded by
Page 158 and 159:
(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
Page 190 and 191:
of this type as well. Remarkably, t
Page 192 and 193:
On the whole, the fortis vs. lenis
Page 194 and 195:
120 100 80 60 40 20 0 120 100 80 60
Page 196 and 197:
Icelandic listeners, even though th
Page 198 and 199:
discussion of possible reasons for
Page 200 and 201:
Table 4-16. The findings of Indrið
Page 202 and 203:
these speakers will henceforth be r
Page 204 and 205:
lenes are often produced with a voi
Page 206 and 207:
Nasal + stop sequences in the Weste
Page 208 and 209:
inte ‘not’ without the final vo
Page 210 and 211:
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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