This is the first issue of volume 37 of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics. NJL is the journal of the Nordic Association of Linguists. Individuals may subscribe to the Journal by joining the Nordic Association of Linguists. The NAL membership form can be found on the Cambridge University Press web site of NJL, http://journals.cambridge.org/NJL, as well as on the NAL web site, http://www.uef.fi/nal.

This is the first issue of volume 37 of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics. NJL is the journal of the Nordic Association of Linguists. Individuals may subscribe to the Journal by joining the Nordic Association of Linguists. The NAL membership form can be found on the Cambridge University Press web site of NJL, http://journals.cambridge.org/NJL, as well as on the NAL web site, http://www.uef.fi/nal.

This is the first issue of volume 37 of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics. NJL is the journal of the Nordic Association of Linguists. Individuals may subscribe to the Journal by joining the Nordic Association of Linguists. The NAL membership form can be found on the Cambridge University Press web site of NJL, http://journals.cambridge.org/NJL, as well as on the NAL web site, http://www.uef.fi/nal.

This is the first issue of volume 37 of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics . NJL is the journal of the Nordic Association of Linguists. Individuals may subscribe to the Journal by joining the Nordic Association of Linguists. The NAL membership form can be found on the Cambridge University Press web site of NJL , http://journals.cambridge.org/NJL, as well as on the NAL web site, http://www.uef.fi/nal.

The durational realization of the Swedish complementary quantity contrast was investigated in monosyllabic and disyllabic target words in Central Standard Swedish and in Fenno-Swedish. Several systematic durational differences between the two varieties were observed, most of which can be summarized by stating that speakers of Fenno-Swedish exaggerate, in comparison to Central Standard Swedish speakers, the quantity contrast between the vowel in the stressed syllable and the following consonant, i.e. they make short segments shorter and long segments longer. This we explain as influence on Fenno-Swedish from Finnish, in which vowels and consonants have a binary quantity contrast independent of each other. In speaking and listening to Finnish, bilingual speakers of Fenno-Swedish have come to make larger durational distinctions than occur in Central Standard Swedish.

This paper reports on the results of an investigation of the fortis–lenis contrast in stops and the complementary quantity contrast in Norwegian and compares these same contrasts in two dialects of Swedish. The data show that in initial position one series of stops has consistently long-lag Voice Onset Time (VOT) and this series is also voiceless in post-vocalic position, often with some preaspiration. The other series can be produced with either prevoicing or short-lag VOT in initial position and is almost always fully voiced in post-vocalic position. These results support the claim that both phonological features [voice] and [spread glottis] are active in Norwegian. The quantity contrast (VC: vs. V:C) was robust for all speakers, but the durational difference between the two quantity patterns was greater for females than for males. Overall the durational difference between the two quantity types in Norwegian was found to be similar to that in Central Standard Swedish, but not as great as in Fenno-Swedish.

This is the first issue of volume 36 of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics. The NJL is the journal of the Nordic Association of Linguists. Individuals may subscribe to the Journal by joining the Nordic Association of Linguists. The NAL membership form can be found on the Cambridge University Press web site of the NJL, http://journals.cambridge.org/NJL, as well as on the NAL web site, http://www.uef.fi/nal.

It is well known that German utterance-initial lenis stops are voiceless but that German intervocalic (or intersonorant) lenis stops are sometimes produced with voicing. This variable voicing can be understood as passive voicing , voicing that results because of the voiced context, rather than from active voicing gestures by speakers. Thus, speakers are not actively aiming to voice intervocalic stops, just as they are not actively aiming to voice utterance-initial stops (Jessen & Ringen 2002, Jessen 2004). If this is correct, the variable voicing that occurs in aspirating languages should be different from the voicing that occurs in true voice languages (such as Russian), in which speakers are actively aiming to voice both initial and intervocalic lenis stops. Since there is little data on the relative amount of intervocalic voicing in true voice languages, however, it has been difficult to evaluate this prediction. The purpose of this paper is to compare data on the voicing of intervocalic stops in German and English with data on the voicing of intervocalic stops in true voice languages. We find that the differences are substantial, supporting the claim that aspirating languages are not like true voice languages, in which the feature of contrast is [voice].

This is the first issue of volume 36 of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics. The NJL is the journal of the Nordic Association of Linguists. Individuals may subscribe to the Journal by joining the Nordic Association of Linguists. The NAL membership form can be found on the Cambridge University Press web site of the NJL, http://journals.cambridge.org/NJL, as well as on the NAL web site, http://www.uef.fi/nal.

This is the first issue of volume 35 of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics. The NJL is the journal of the Nordic Association of Linguists. Individuals may subscribe to the Journal by joining the Nordic Association of Linguists. The NAL membership form can be found on the Cambridge University Press web site of the NJL, http://journals.cambridge.org/NJL, as well as on the NAL web site, http://www.uef.fi/nal.

This paper presents the results of an investigation of the fortis–lenis contrast in Fenno-Swedish stops. The data show that in utterance-initial position, the two-way contrast is realised as a contrast between unaspirated and prevoiced stops. Word-medially and finally, the contrast is that of voiceless, unaspirated stops and fully voiced stops. Fenno-Swedish is thus another Germanic language, like Dutch, Afrikaans and Yiddish, that has a contrast between plain unaspirated and prevoiced stops in utterance initial position. The stop contrast in Fenno-Swedish differs from that of Central Standard Swedish, in two ways: (i) In Central Standard Swedish the contrast is between aspirated and prevoiced stops in utterance initial position, whereas it is between voiceless, unaspirated stops and prevoiced stops in Fenno-Swedish; in medial and final position, one series of stops in Central Standard Swedish is voiceless (aspirated, preaspirated or unaspirated) and the other series is fully voiced, whereas in Fenno-Swedish, one series is voiceless and unaspirated and the other voiced, i.e., in Fenno-Swedish there is no aspiration. (ii) Variation was observed for some Fenno-Swedish speakers in the production of /b d ɡ/, with many tokens being completely voiceless and overlapping phonetically with tokens of /p t k/, whereas there is no overlap between the two stop categories in Central Standard Swedish. Stops in Finnish are voiceless and unaspirated. The fact that the aspirated stops have been lost in Fenno-Swedish, and the fact that there are voiceless occurrences of /b d ɡ/ tokens in Fenno-Swedish suggests influence from Finnish. Fenno-Swedish thus appears to pattern with other languages influenced by a language with a different system of laryngeal contrasts.

This paper presents the results of an investigation of voicing in utterance-initial and intervocalic stops in monolingual Russian speakers. Prevoicing was found in over 97% of the lenis stops; over 97% of the intervocalic stops were fully voiced. Utterance-initial fortis stops were pronounced as voiceless unaspirated and had short positive VOT. Intervocalic fortis stops were completely voiceless except for a short voicing tail into closure. These results are relevant for typological studies of voicing. Some studies of languages with a two-way contrast between initial stops with prevoicing and short lag VOT have reported that prevoicing is less robust than what might be expected. These findings have been attributed to influence from another language without prevoicing. Our results with monolingual speakers of Russian support these claims. Our results are also relevant for the debate about the laryngeal feature in aspirating languages, which often have some voicing of intervocalic lenis stops. Such voicing has been attributed to passive voicing, in contrast with active voicing that occurs in true voice languages such as Russian. We found that the voicing in Russian is much more robust than the intervocalic voicing in aspirating languages. This difference is explained if the features of contrast are different in the two types of languages: [voice] in the case of Russian and [spread glottis] in the case of aspirating languages.

This is the first issue of volume 35 of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics . The NJL is the journal of the Nordic Association of Linguists. Individuals may subscribe to the Journal by joining the Nordic Association of Linguists. The NAL membership form can be found on the Cambridge University Press web site of the NJL , http://journals.cambridge.org/NJL , as well as on the NAL web site, http://www.uef.fi/nal .

This is the first issue of volume 34 of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics. The NJL is the journal of the Nordic Association of Linguists. Individuals may subscribe to the Journal by joining the Nordic Association of Linguists. The NAL membership form can be found on the Cambridge University Press web site of the NJL, http://journals.cambridge.org/NJL, as well as on the NAL web site, http://www.uef.fi/nal.

Previous research has found asymmetric effects of speaking rate on VOT cross-linguistically: as rate slows, long-lag VOTs and negative VOTs increase, but short-lag VOTs remain essentially unchanged. If we assume, as have many phonologists, that the two-way contrast in voicing languages (e.g. French) is [voice] vs. [Ø] and in aspirating languages (e.g. English) is [spread glottis] vs. [Ø], then it appears that at slower rates, a phonological contrast is heightened by selective increase in the phonetic cue for the specified feature. Thus, slowing down causes longer aspiration in aspirating languages and longer prevoicing in voicing languages but no change in short-lag stops. We report the results of an experiment on Central Standard Swedish stops designed to investigate the effect of speaking rate on VOT. CS Swedish uses both prevoiced and aspirated stops in utterance-initial position, hence the phonological feature(s) involved in this contrast is not clear. We found that both prevoicing and aspiration increase in slow speech in Swedish. This suggests that both [voice] and [spread glottis] are the specified features of phonological contrast in CS Swedish, and in turn raises questions about whether phonological specification more generally is economical. Moreover, the fact that speaking rate affects VOT even in situations like CS Swedish in which the phonological contrast is over-specified suggests that such modification is largely due to production dynamics, not speakers’ sensitivity to listeners’ needs.

This is the first issue of volume 33 of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics. The NJL is the journal of the Nordic Association of Linguists. Individuals may subscribe to the Nordic Journal of Linguistics by joining the Nordic Association of Linguists. The NAL membership form can be found on the Cambridge University Press web site of the NJL, , as well as on the NAL web site, .

This is the first issue of volume 33 of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics. The NJL is the journal of the Nordic Association of Linguists. Individuals may subscribe to the Nordic Journal of Linguistics by joining the Nordic Association of Linguists. The NAL membership form can be found on the Cambridge University Press web site of the NJL, , as well as on the NAL web site, .

This is the first issue of volume 33 of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics . The NJL is the journal of the Nordic Association of Linguists. Individuals may subscribe to the Nordic Journal of Linguistics by joining the Nordic Association of Linguists. The NAL membership form can be found on the Cambridge University Press web site of the NJL , < http://journals.cambridge.org/NJL >, as well as on the NAL web site, < http://cc.joensuu.fi/linguistics/nal >.

This paper presents results of an investigation of VOT in the speech of twelve speakers of Fenno-Swedish. The data show that in utterance-initial position, the two-way contrast is usually realised as a contrast between prevoiced and unaspirated stops. Medially and finally, the contrast is that of a fully voiced stop and a voiceless unaspirated stop. However, a large amount of variation was observed for some speakers in the production of /b d g/, with many tokens being completely voiceless and overlapping phonetically with tokens of /p t k/. Such tokens, and the lack of aspiration in /p t k/, set Fenno-Swedish apart from the varieties spoken in Sweden. In Finnish, /b d g/ are marginal and do not occur in many varieties, and /p t k/ are voiceless unaspirated. We suggest that Fenno-Swedish VOT has been influenced by Finnish. Method Twelve native speakers of Fenno-Swedish (6 females, 6 males) were recorded in Turku, Finland. The ages of the male speakers varied between 22 and 32 years, those of the female speakers between 24 years and 48 years. Fenno-Swedish was the first language and the language of education of the subjects, as well as of both of their parents. The speakers came from all three main areas in which Swedish is spoken in Finland: Uusimaa/Nyland (the southern coast of Finland), Turunmaa / Aboland (the south-western coast) and Pohjanmaa / Osterbotten ( the western coast, Ostrobothnia). The speakers are all fluent in Finnish. There were 68 target words containing one or more stops. A list was prepared in which the target words occurred twice, with six filler words added to the beginning of the list. The recordings took place in an anechoic chamber at the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience of Turku University. The words were presented to the subjects on a computer screen. The subjects received each new word by clicking the mouse and were instructed to click only when they had finished uttering a target word. The subjects were instructed to speak naturally, and their productions were recorded directly to a hard disk (22.5 kHz, 16 bit) using high quality equipment. Measurements were made using broad-band spectrograms and oscillograms.

Abstract In this paper we show how Jessen & Ringen's (2002) analysis of voicing in German stops can be extended to account for the voicing of German fricatives. It is argued that while stops in German contrast for the feature [spread glottis], fricatives contrast for [voice] (and [spread glottis]). Our analysis, which involves presonorant faithfulness, is compared to an analysis with coda devoicing. We show that the two analyses make crucially different predictions, and present experimental evidence in support of the presonorant faithfulness analysis. The experimental results show considerable variation, which can be accommodated in our OT analysis.