Preaspirasjon i norsk i nye og gamle kjelder

 Share on Twitter

This paper (in Norwegian) contains an overview of traditional and modern sources of information regarding preaspiration of |fortis| stops (the /p t k/ series) in Norwegian vernaculars. Traditional sources note them in the dialects of North Gudbrandsdalen, Härjedalen, Rogaland, and a few in Northern Norway. However, I argue that preaspiration is much more widespread than that: I collect evidence from more recent instrumental studies, from dialect corpora, and from an original acoustic study with a focus on Northern Norwegian varieties, and argue, following scholars such as Gunnar Ólafur Hansson and Pétur Helgason, that preaspiration is pervasive in North Germanic vernaculars. I also offer a discussion of some historical consequences of this fact; notably, I suggest that preaspiration may have been implicated in a process traditionally considered an instance of intervocalic lenition.