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
Barddal, Johanna; Arnett, Carlee; Carey, Stephen Mark; Eythorsson, Thorhallur; Jenset, Gard B.; Kroonen, G.J.; Oberlin, Adam 2016
This thesis investigates doubling and agreement in Romance and Germanic nominal constituents. In Swedish, Norwegian, and Faroese, the definite article is doubled in case an adjective modifies the... Show moreThis thesis investigates doubling and agreement in Romance and Germanic nominal constituents. In Swedish, Norwegian, and Faroese, the definite article is doubled in case an adjective modifies the noun. This doubling is known as double definiteness. This thesis proposes that double definiteness is the result of an intriguing interaction between syntax and morphology. The absence of double definiteness in other Germanic languages is attributed to morphological variation. The thesis mainly, however, deals with the distinction between strong and weak adjectival inflection in Germanic and its absence in the Romance. This thesis proposes that agreement on attributive adjectives is always licensed indirectly, through the help of a mediating element. In the case of Germanic weak adjectival inflection, this mediating element is partially deactivated for independent reasons. In the case of Germanic strong adjectival inflection as well as Romance adjectival inflection, this mediating element is however always fully active. On the theoretical level, this thesis proposes that the syntactic configuration in which agreement can occur is best defined in terms of dominance. It is argued that a definition in terms of dominance is both theoretically simpler as well as empirically more adequate than a definition in terms of c-command. Show less
