Towards a Typology of Phonological Quantity in the Dialects of Modern Swedish Felix Schaeffler and P¨ar Wretling Department of Philosophy and Linguistics, University of Ume˚a, Sweden [email protected], [email protected] ABSTRACT sonant cluster. Because of this alternating pattern in the length of vowels and consonants, CSS quantity is This study examines phonological quantity and its usually called “complementary”. Measurements by El- phonetic outcome in a large range of modern Swedish ert [2] showed clear durational differences between long dialects. It focusses on the so-called complementary and short vowels and between the consonants follow- quantity pattern and the accompanying differences in ing them. With that, /V:C/ sequences and /VC:/ se- vocalic quality. The results show that the amount of quences tend to be of equal length. However, the differ- complementarity in quantity distinctions varies sys- ence between the vowels is somewhat greater than the tematically across the dialects. This is due to re- difference between the consonants. Therefore /VC:/ duced differences between long and short consonants. sequences are usually slightly shorter than /V:C/ se- Furthermore we found some indication that the spec- quences in CSS (cf. [2], p. 158). The complementary tral difference between long and short vowels increases pattern has been opposed to quantity patterns in lan- when the degree of complementarity decreases. guages like German and Danish, where only the vowel changes its duration (see e.g. [3], p. 23). Similar re- lationships with only a slight difference of consonant 1 INTRODUCTION duration after long vs. short vowels have also been re- ported for one dialectal region in Southern Sweden, namely Sk˚ane (see [4], p. 27-28). This study focusses on the realisation of complemen- tary quantity, that is the complementary relationship between vowel length and consonant length in Swedish. 1.3 THE ORIGIN OF COMPLEMENTARITY Complementary quantity is often seen as a quite unique The origin of the complementary pattern has been at- characteristic of the Scandinavian languages (except tributed to diachronic changes of syllable structure. It Danish) and marks therefore a natural point of depar- seems to be mostly a consequence of the elimination ture for the construction of a typology of phonological of so-called “short” /VC/ and “over-long” /V:C:/ se- quantity in modern Swedish dialects. quences during the “Scandinavian quantity shift” (see e.g. [5]). In Standard Swedish, the elimination of the 1.1 THE PROJECT “SweDia 2000” short and over-long sequences is complete, while some The project “SweDia 2000” is a joint project of the dialects kept the short sequences, mostly in bi-syllabic Phonetics sections of the universities of Stockholm, words. A few dialects even seem to have preserved Lund and Ume˚a (for a detailed description of the over-long sequences (cf. [6], [7], [8]). In dialects that project, see e.g. [1]). Between 1998 and 2000 record- kept short or over-long sequences, vowel and consonant ings were made at about 100 locations all over Sweden quantity is not just complementary, but consonant du- and the Swedish speaking parts of Finland. For each ration functions partly independent of vowel duration. location recordings of 3 elderly women, 3 elderly men, 3 younger women and 3 younger men have been made. 1.4 QUANTITY AND QUALITY The material includes recordings of several quantity The quantity distinctions of vowels in CSS are accom- minimal pairs, where, normally, each speaker produced panied by differences in the vocalic timbre. In [9] we each word five times in a row. have investigated spectral and durational differences between the long and the short variant of the vowel 1.2 QUANTITY IN SWEDISH /a/ in Northern Swedish dialects (with partly the same Central Standard Swedish (CSS) restricts the use of material as in this study). We found some indications phonological quantity to lexically stressed syllables. for a possible trading relationship between the spectral Under stress, long vowels are either syllable-final or and the durational difference of the vowels. However, followed by a short consonant (V:C), while short vow- the effects were rather weak and only observable for els are followed by a long consonant (VC:) or a con- “extreme” cases, i.e. for dialects that had exceptional high durational or spectral differences. 2.3 MEASUREMENTS Only data of those speakers was used who produced both words and repeated both more than once with- 1.5 AIMS OF THE STUDY out a preaspiration phase. The measured variables The first aim of the present study was to find out, up were averaged for every speaker, so that each speaker to which degree the complementary pattern is realised was represented with one value per variable. For the in the dialects of modern Swedish. Therefore we exam- spectral analysis we performed the following measure- ined the durational differences between the /V:C/ and ments: F0, F1 and F2 were measured in the middle of the /VC:/ sequence of a minimal pair, together with each vowel. For each speaker and vowel category, the the difference between the long and the short vowel mean values of F0, F1 and F2 were calculated. To get and the difference between the post-vocalic consonants. an approximate estimation of the perceptual difference The second aim was to examine vocalic timbre differ- of the two vowels, these values were bark-transformed ences between the long and the short variant of the and for each vowel the differences B2-B1 and B1-B0 vowel, and to look for possible relations to durational were calculated. Then the euclidean distance between differences. the location of the long and the short vowel in the (B1-B0) over (B2-B1) space was calculated. 2 METHOD 3 RESULTS 3.1 DURATIONS 2.1 DIALECT AREAS For each of the seven dialect areas, table 1 provides the As a geographical basis for the analysis of the di- number of speakers and the means and standard devi- alectal patterns we used a traditional classification ations for the long and short vowels, for the long and in major areas, that has been developed by Swedish short consonants and for the respective VC-sequences. dialectologists (see e.g. [10]). According to this, The dialect areas have been roughly ordered from Swedish is roughly divided into 6 dialect areas, namely north-east to south. Table 2 shows the mean differ- ¨ “Ostsvenska m˚al” (Eastern Swedish variety, EV - ences, and standard deviations, between the /V:C/ and comprising the Swedish dialects spoken in Finland), the /VC:/ sequence (δVC), the long and the short vowel “Norrl¨andska m˚al” (Northern Swedish variety, NV), (δV ) and the long and the short consonant (δC ). “Sveam˚al” (Svea variety, SV), “G¨otam˚al” (G¨ota vari- ety, GV), “Sydsvenska m˚al” (Southern Swedish vari- n V: C V C: V:C VC: ety, SoV), and “Gotl¨andska m˚al” (Gotlandic variety, EV 12 233 157 136 258 390 394 GotV). As a seventh category we added the variety (64) (43) (48) (60) (76) (95) ¨ ¨ NV 27 199 162 113 218 361 331 spoken on the island “Oland” (Oland variety, OeV). (35) (23) (22) (56) (48) (62) For the analysis, all recording locations were assigned SV 29 194 166 117 214 360 331 to a dialect area. The numbers of speakers per dialect (34) (35) (28) (46) (57) (64) area are given below. GV 38 204 160 125 185 363 310 (42) (38) (32) (52) (58) (71) SoV 25 214 177 134 196 392 330 (55) (48) (24) (54) (81) (69) 2.2 SUBJECTS AND MATERIAL GotV 8 186 156 107 175 342 283 The study was based on the comparison of one mini- (30) (37) (25) (41) (38) (42) mal pair, produced by 147 speakers of the category OeV 8 201 138 140 143 339 283 (43) (42) (27) (45) (69) (65) “elderly men” in the Swedia database. The speakers came from 66 different locations in Sweden and the Swedish speaking parts of Finland. The minimal pair Table 1: Mean durations and standard deviations (in used was “tak” (roof) vs. “tack” (thank you). “Tak” brackets) for the minimal pair tak-tack. Val- has a /V:C/ structure, while “tack” has a /VC:/ struc- ues for the vowels, the following consonants and the whole sequences. ture in CSS. The segmentation of the sounds followed usual criteria like increase and decrease of formant en- ergy, periodicity in the time signal etc. (see [8] for a The mean values for vowel duration and consonant du- more thorough description). The end of the final plo- ration are also graphically represented in figure 1 and sive was always marked immediately before the burst. 2. Table 2 shows that the regions differ in δVC.In In some cases, a preaspiration phase was marked be- the Eastern Swedish sample, the difference between the tween the vowel and the following plosive. Those to- /V:C/ and the /VC:/ sequence is virtually 0 (-4 ms). kens have been excluded from the current investiga- In the G¨ota varieties and the Svea varieties, the mean tion. Detailed accounts on preaspiration in our mate- difference between the two sequences is around 30 ms. rial can be found in [11] and [12]. In the remaining areas, δVC is around 60 ms. For each δVC δV δC the 5% level across the groups (a non-parametric test EV -4 (55) 97 (30) 101 (53) NV 30 (49) 86 (31) 56 (49) was chosen here and in the following if the samples SV 28 (39) 77 (25) 49 (31) differed significantly in variance according to a Levene GV 54 (38) 79 (24) 25 (37) test).