Proceedings from FONETIK 2014, Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University An acoustic study of the Estonian Swedish lateral [ɬ] Susanne Schötz1, Francis Nolan2, Eva Liina Asu3 1Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Sweden 2 Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, University of Cambridge, UK 3 Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, University of Tartu, Estonia [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract Schötz and Kügler (2009), and a study This pilot study investigates the Estoni- of the prosody of compounds by Schötz an Swedish (ES) voiceless lateral [ɬ], and Asu (2013). Yet, the ES sound sys- which is rare among the Scandinavian tem offers plenty of interesting and dialects and is a development mainly of unique material for acoustic phonetic historic /sl/ clusters. Six elderly ES study. One of such is the lateral system speakers were recorded, and the phono- that will be tackled here. logical and phonetic (duration, relative According to H. Lagman (1971: intensity) properties of [ɬ] studied and 175–188), ES has a fairly large number compared to other ES consonants and of laterals consisting of the following: [ɬ] in Icelandic. The results suggest that (1) [l]: a voiced dental or alveolar ES [ɬ] is a single consonant rather than common to all Scandinavian lan- a consonant cluster. It behaves much guages, in most contexts, e.g. lag like initial [s] in duration, although a (team) and vall (ley, mound), tendency to anticipatory voicing in its (2) [ɭ]: a voiced supradental (post al- latter part may point to its ‘approxi- veolar) in the context /r/ + /l/, like mant’ status. Furthermore, ES [ɬ] is many Swedish and Norwegian dia- similar in intensity to the Icelandic [ɬ]. lects (except most with [ʁ]; and It has a phonemic status and it can be Finland Swedish), e.g. farligheter both short and long. Laterals as well as [fɑːɭɪhaɪtɵ(ɹ)] (hazards), other phonetic aspects of ES are in ur- (3) [ɽ]: a voiced retroflex flap in some gent need of further research. contexts, as in some Swedish and Norwegian dialects, e.g. blå [bɽoː] Introduction (blue) and nagel [nɑːɽ] (nail), Until the Soviet Russian occupation at (4) [ɬ]: a voiceless alveolar fricative, the end of WWII there was a substantial used sometimes in the (historic) Swedish speaking population in Estonia contexts /sl-/ and /tl-/, which is which had settled there in medieval more rare among the Scandinavian times from the 13th century onwards. dialects, e.g. slag [ɬoː] (stroke, Swedish was concentrated mainly on blow) and vassle [vaɬː] (whey). islands off the west coast of Estonia and The latter two constitute major devel- on the north-west corner of the Estonian opments in the lateral system, one mainland. Nowadays, Estonian Swedish common to many dialects of Swedish (ES) survives only in a small communi- and Norwegian, and the other idiosyn- ty of elderly emigrants to Sweden and a cratic, or at least very rare. The retro- tiny handful of equally elderly speakers flex flap [ɽ], often referred to as ‘cacu- in Estonia. minal’ or ‘thick’ /l/, is found in initial The sound system of ES has so far clusters (e.g. flytta [fɽɛte] or [fɽɪtː] ‘to mainly been studied in the descriptive move’, and blöt [bɽɑʊt] ‘wet’), medially framework of dialect research (e.g. E. in some words (e.g. mala [mɔɽɐ] ‘to Lagman, 1979). The only two existing grind’), and finally after certain conso- acoustic phonetic studies are an investi- nants (e.g. fågel [føːɽ] ‘bird’, and gation of ES close vowels by Asu, körhjul [keːɾjøːɽ] ‘bicycle’). Swedish 23 Proceedings from FONETIK 2014, Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University and Norwegian [ɽ] is thought to have Ormsö ES were recorded in Stockholm first arisen as a realisation of [rð] se- in 2012. All speakers have been resi- quences in Old Norse in words such as dent in Stockholm since the 1940s. The garðr ‘court(yard)’ and borð ‘board’, main speech material was compiled and to have spread to /l/ in certain con- with the help of the members of the texts. Tiberg (1962), though, claims that Estonian Swedish community Svenska [ɽ] in Estonian Swedish did not origi- Odlingens Vänner (SOV) in Stockholm nate from [rð] sequences. and contained 90 words, most of which The second development, the lat- included liquid consonants in various eral voiceless fricative [ɬ] from historic positions. The words were read in the sequences of /s/+/l/, occurs in words carrier sentence ‘jag sa ___ igen’ (I said such as slipp [ɬɪpː] ‘cloth/rag’ and ___ again). The speakers were asked to vassle [vaɬː] ‘whey’. This sound is used produce three repetitions of each sen- consistently across our speakers, though tence. In this study we focussed on five with realisational variation. It is very words with initial [ɬ(l)]: slag, slita, slipp rare in Swedish varieties, being (to our (=‘rag’), slå, and slak, eleven words knowledge) found elsewhere only in the with initial [f]: fågel, falla, fel, föl, föll, Älvdalska and Orsamål dialects of Da- fall, fil, fall, fylla, fåll, fittla (=‘tickle’), larna in the west of Sweden. It may also and six words with initial [fɽ]: flytta, have been present in the Gam- flaska, flat, fläta, flämta, flicka. malsvenskby dialect found in Ukraine before coming under pressure from more standard forms. The purpose of the present paper is to quantify the phonetic properties of ES [ɬ]. Specifically, we wanted to an- swer the following questions: (a) Is [ɬ] still a complex onset, i.e. a nostalgic [sl–] consonant cluster? An initial audi- tory analysis revealed that many tokens, especially in Rickul ES, have [ɬl], and some tokens showed evidence of a voiceless vocalic portion before the lateral friction, i.e. [hɬl]. Does this sug- gest a phonological sequence, assimi- lated for manner but not voicing? (b) if [ɬ(l)] is not a cluster, has the original [sl-] become a lateralised [s], or has it become a devoiced [l]?, and (c) Is it an Figure 1. The main dialect areas of Estonian Swedish in the 1930s (from E. Lagman approximant [l̥ ] or a fricative [ɬ]? An ̥ 1979: 2). additional aim ̥was to hypothesise the historical origin̥ of [ɬ]. As additional materials an elicited word list adapted from the word list used in Material and method the Swedish dialect project SweDia Speakers for the present study represent 2000 (Bruce et al., 1999) was used. the Nuckö-Rickul-Ormsö variety of These materials were recorded in Estonian Swedish which forms the Stockholm in 2009 with four Rickul largest dialect area of Estonian Swe- speakers (of whom three were the same dish. As can be seen from Figure 1 as the ones recorded in 2012). From this Nuckö and Rickul lie in the north-west corpus, we selected the following of the Estonian mainland and Ormsö is words: [l]: läs, lus, lös, lat, lott, lass, a small island close to Nuckö. Three ludd, lett, and [s]: särk, såll, saker, sur elderly speakers of each of Rickul and ([søːɹ], used instead of söt for /øː/). 24 Proceedings from FONETIK 2014, Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University The target words were manually voiceless [ɬ], while one speaker has segmented in Praat (Boersma & Ween- shorter, and less frequent voicing at the ink, 2014), and durations obtained of end of the lateral. There is some ten- the initial singleton consonant or con- dency towards an [h] onset to [ɬ] in both sonant cluster. In the case of [ɬ] we also dialects, which may be interpreted as measured the duration of its potential pre-aspiration or anticipatory devoicing components: [(h) ɬ (l)]. Figure 2 shows of the vowel. an example of an [ɬl] by one Rickul speaker. Phonological and phonetic status of [ɬ] Is [ɬ] a singleton or consonant cluster? Several of the [ɬ] tokens are realised as [(h)ɬl], which is unlike [ɬ] in other lan- guages, like e.g. Zulu and Welsh (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996; Mark Jones, pers. communication). The dura- tion is also rather long for a singleton (150-250 ms, see Figure 3). This would suggest that [ɬl] is phonologically a consonant cluster. However, two of the Figure 2. Waveform and spectrogram of [ɬl] Ormsö speakers lack voicing, and only for one Rickul speaker. one Rickul speaker has no fully voice- less tokens, which would indicate that Results [ɬl] is phonologically a singleton. Figure Phonetic properties of [ɬ] 4 shows mean durations of the conso- nant cluster [fɽ], the two singleton con- Mean durations of [(h) ɬ (l)] for Rickul sonants [s] and [f], and the possible and Ormsö ES are shown in Figure 3. consonant cluster [(h)ɬl]. Figure 3. Mean duration of the components of [(h) ɬ (l)] for three Rickul (top) and three Figure 4. Mean duration of initial [ɬ(l)], [fɽ], Ormsö (bottom) speakers. [s] and [f] for three Rickul (top) and three Ormsö (bottom) speakers. The Rickul speakers on average pro- duce a largely voiceless lateral, which The results for [s] should, however, be is often voiced towards the end. Two of seen as tentative since they are based on the Ormsö speakers produce completely only three tokens of each speaker, and 25 Proceedings from FONETIK 2014, Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University as two of the Ormsö speakers did not voicing is characteristic of [l̥ ] (and produce any words with initial [s]. In some voiceless nasals) rather than [ɬ]. both Rickul and Ormsö ES, [s] can be On this basis the ES voiceless lat- as long as [ɬ(l)], suggesting that [ɬ(l)] eral shows signs of anticipatory voic- need not be a cluster. However, dura- ing, i.e. of being an approximant, at tional compensation means that clusters least in Rickul ES.