This dissertation investigates the phonetic and phonological characteristics of Danish stop consonants, with particular focus on their diachronic origin and synchronic variation. Using data... Show moreThis dissertation investigates the phonetic and phonological characteristics of Danish stop consonants, with particular focus on their diachronic origin and synchronic variation. Using data-oriented and statistical methods, it fills empirical gaps in phonetic research on Danish stops and in doing so contributes to our understanding of the overall sound system of the language.The dissertation reports the results of a number of studies which combine spontaneous speech corpora with state-of-the-art techniques in statistical modeling. Topics considered include intervocalic voicing, which is shown to be rare in all stops and in almost all phonetic contexts, and affrication of aspirated stop releases, which is shown to be strongly dependent on place of articulation. The dissertation also investigates a range of phonetic parameters in a legacy corpus of traditional varieties of Jutland Danish, with the results showing systematic regional variation even in minute acoustic details. Show less
The acoustic characteristics of noise from fricatives and stop releases are difficult to analyze. The spectral characteristics of such noise are multi-dimensional, and popular methods for analyzing... Show moreThe acoustic characteristics of noise from fricatives and stop releases are difficult to analyze. The spectral characteristics of such noise are multi-dimensional, and popular methods for analyzing them typically rely on reducing this complex information to one or a few discrete numbers, such as spectral moments or coefficients of discrete cosine transformations. In this paper, I propose using function-on-scalar regression models as a method for analyzing and mass-comparing spectra with minimal reduction of the complexity in the signal. The method is further useful for analyzing how spectra change as a function of time. The usefulness of this method is demonstrated with a corpus analysis of Danish aspirated stop releases, using the DanPASS corpus. The analysis finds that /t/ releases are invariably affricated; /k/ releases are highly affected by coarticulatory context; and /p/ releases are almost always dominated by aspiration in the latter half of the release, but are affricated in the first half in certain contexts. Show less
Puggaard-Rode, R.; Horslund, C.S.; Jørgensen, H. 2022
Previous studies of the phonetics of Danish stops have neglected closure voicing. Danish is an aspiration language, but the aspirated stops /p t k/ are produced with shorter closure duration and... Show morePrevious studies of the phonetics of Danish stops have neglected closure voicing. Danish is an aspiration language, but the aspirated stops /p t k/ are produced with shorter closure duration and less articulatory effort than the unaspirated stops /b d ɡ/. Furthermore, all Danish stops are characterized by some degree of glottal spreading during the closure. In this study, we use a corpus of Danish spontaneous speech (DanPASS) to investigate the intervocalic voicing—its distribution across the two laryngeal categories, whether it patterns as a lenition phenomenon, and whether the aerodynamic environment predicts its distribution. We find that intervocalic voicing is not the norm for either set of stops and is particularly rare in /p t k/. Voiced tokens are mostly found in environments associated with lenition. We suggest that the glottal spreading gesture found in all Danish stops is a phonological mechanism blocking voicing, which is probabilistically lost in spontaneous speech. This predicts our results better than relying on laryngeal features like [voice] or [spread glottis]. The study fills a gap in our knowledge of Danish phonetics and phonology, and is also one of the most extensive corpus studies of intervocalic stop voicing in an ‘aspiration language.’ Show less
Søballe Horslund, C.; Puggaard, R.; Jørgensen, H. 2022
The traditional phoneme analysis of the Danish consonant inventory links onset and coda consonants on the basis of historical alternations and morphologically conditioned alternations within a... Show moreThe traditional phoneme analysis of the Danish consonant inventory links onset and coda consonants on the basis of historical alternations and morphologically conditioned alternations within a small subset of the Danish lexicon. This traditional analysis proposes a system resulting in a large number of neutralizations that cannot be dissolved, and in which allophones of the same phoneme lack shared phonetic content. We argue that the system proposed by the traditional analysis is impossible to learn from the language input, which renders the analysis an implausible description of the Danish consonant system. On the basis of theoretical discussions, we offer an alternative phoneme analysis, which we believe to be learnable from the data available in the language input. Our analysis is based on insights from Natural Phonology and Bidirectional Phonetics and Phonology. We propose a system without undissolvable neutralizations, with shared phonetic content between allophones of the same phoneme, and without the need to rely on alternations that children are unlikely to learn in early childhood. Show less
It is a well-known overt feature of the Northern Jutlandic variety of Danish that /t/ is pronounced with short voice onset time and no affrication. This is not limited to Northern Jutland, but... Show moreIt is a well-known overt feature of the Northern Jutlandic variety of Danish that /t/ is pronounced with short voice onset time and no affrication. This is not limited to Northern Jutland, but shows up across the peninsula. This paper expands on this research, using a large corpus to show that complex geographical patterns of variation in voice onset time is found in all fortis stops, but not in lenis stops. Modeling the data using generalized additive mixed modeling both allows us to explore these geographical patterns in detail, as well as test a number of hypotheses about how a number of environmental and social factors affect voice onset time. Show less
Sloos, M.; Liang, J.; Ne, X.; Hansen, R.P.; Yan, M.; Zhang, C. 2015
Although speech rhythm is a highly important factor in theevaluation of nativeness, it is usually not explicitly taught insecond language acquisition. Moreover, acquisition studiesof Mandarin... Show moreAlthough speech rhythm is a highly important factor in theevaluation of nativeness, it is usually not explicitly taught insecond language acquisition. Moreover, acquisition studiesof Mandarin prosody typically focus on the acquisition oftone. We investigated durational patterns of MandarinChinese as produced by Danish learners. Native MandarinChinese rhythm is characterized by, first, sentence-finalsyllable lengthening, then tone-intrinsic duration, andfinally, rhyme structure. Danish speech rhythm isfundamentally different, since Danish is a stress languagewith only primary stress on the level of the phonologicalphrase, and extensive reduction of unstressed syllables. Weshow that the interlanguage of Danish learners of Chinese iscomparable to native Mandarin Chinese duration patternswith regard to rhyme structure. However, differentiation ofduration based on tone and final lengthening lags behind inDanish acquisition of Chinese. Show less
In the Danish public debate a familiar pattern of polarization has emerged. Danes who become Muslim by conversion need to respond to prevalent identity grammars that contrast Danish and Muslim... Show moreIn the Danish public debate a familiar pattern of polarization has emerged. Danes who become Muslim by conversion need to respond to prevalent identity grammars that contrast Danish and Muslim identities. In carving a space as Danish Muslims, converts create new and hybrid identities that favour openness and equality in the public domain. Yet although these new Muslims embody the potential to transform identity models, the controversial nature of conversion means that their societal impact remains uncertain. Show less
