Diphthongization in Three Regional Varieties of Swedish

With a view to verify whether the vowel quantity is a critical part of the essence of the West Swedish dialect, manipulations of the vowel quantity in one-word utterances were carried out by means of synthetic speech. In order to distinguish the role of the vowel quantity when identifying West Swedish, a perception test was produced. The results suggest that the vowel quantity is an indispensable part of the identity of West Swedish and a required variable when synthetically reproducing the same.

2009

This pilot study investigates the phonetic realisation of Estonian Swedish long close vowels comparing them with Central Swedish and Finland Swedish counterparts. It appears that in the Rickul variety of Estonian Swedish there is a distinction between only three long close vowels. The analysed vowels of Estonian Swedish are more similar to those of Central Swedish than Finland Swedish, as measured by the Euclidean distance. Further research with more data is needed to establish the exact vowel space and phonetic characteristics of Estonian Swedish dialects.

2011

This paper describes an articulographic and acoustic pilot study of the realisation of the vowel /iː/ in two regional varieties of Swedish. The study was carried out within the new research project Exotic vowels in Swedish – an articulographic study of palatal vowels [VOKART], which aims at increasing the empirical knowledge of vowel production in general, and extending our knowledge of the articulatory dynamics of palatal vowels in Swedish in particular. Articulatory and acoustic recordings of two male speakers – one South Swedish with regular [iː] and one East Central (Standard) Swedish with “damped”, so called “Viby-coloured” [ɨː] – were analysed. Results showed that [ɨː] was pronounced further back with an overall lower tongue position, but with a higher position of the tongue tip than [iː]. Acoustic analysis showed a lower F2 for [ɨː] than [iː], indicating a more centralised vowel quality. These very tentative results will be followed up with larger studies within the project.

2005

Dialects of Swedish vary in the pronunciation of unstressed /e/ in different phonological environments. In this pilot study, Stockholm Swedish is compared with several Finland Swedish dialects. Stockholm and one Åland dialect lower and back /e/ before [n], while Helsinki and most Nyland dialects lower and back /e/ before [r]. The data provide evidence for the sociolinguistic relevance of unstressed vowel pronunciation.

Annual Report of the Institute of Phonetics University of Copenhagen, 1975

'Diphthong' is here taken to be a phonetic and not a phonological concept. The meaning of the term 'diphthong' is discussed in section 2, and the classification of (Danish} diphthongs into rising and falling in section 3.1. Section 3 contains proposals as to the phonological treatment of the falling diphthongs in Danish from several angles. In section 4, finally, we shall ask and try to answer the question: can 'diphthong' in any sense be considered a phonologically (i.e. functionally} relevant concept in Danish? l. 'october', sober 'sober',~ 'knot', but possibly in hoben. 'heap'; ibid.). These "exceptions" may be related to the fact

Swedish (~9,000,000 speakers) is one of five Scandinavian languages, along with Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, and Faroese, all descended from a common language that existed up until roughly 800 years ago. Norwegian and Swedish in particular retain mutual intelligibility, and are famous for two things: firstly, their large vowel inventories, which appears to have as many as eighteen contrasting vowel qualities, and their pitch accent system, highly anomalous for Germanic languages. The present paper will focus on the pitch-accent system of Swedish, though in proving that this is indeed a pitch-accent system and not a matter of tonality as some researchers have suggested, will be considering syllable structure and its link to vowel quality as well. The pitch-accent system has been studied for decades, predominantly by Swedish and Norwegian phonologists; this paper will be looking at theories indicating that the pitch-accent system of Swedish is at least partly redundant due to its predictability via the phonology and morphology of a word, lend support to a specific analysis of the system and its predictability, and provide new data suggesting that this predictability is indeed productive in speech, able to be generalized to novel words.

Articulatory data were collected for the Swedish vowels /iː, yˌ, ʉ̟ː/ from nine speakers each of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmöhus Swedish, and the tongue positions and their dynamics analysed using Functional Data Analysis (FDA). Results showed that the general tongue positions for /iː/and/yː/aresimilarandclearlydifferentfrom/ʉ̟ː/ in all three dialects. Variation within the Stockholm and Gothenburg groups led to a subdivision into two types, where the tongue positions of type 1 resem- bled Malmöhus Swedish more. Several differences in tongue articulation between types 1 and 2 were observed, possibly explained by the presence of Viby-coloured /iː/ and /yː/ in type 2.

The topic of this paper is the variability of phrase-initial pitch patterns of South Swedish. Central Swedish pitch patterns for phrase-initial accent I both to the East (Stockholm) and to the West (Gothenburg) display an apparent constancy, albeit with distinct patterns: East Central Swedish rising and West Central Swedish fall-rise. In South Swedish, the corresponding pitch patterns can be described as more variable. The falling default accentual pitch pattern in the South is dominating in the major-ity of the sub-varieties examined, even if a rising pattern and a fall-rise are not uncommon here. There seems to be a dif-ference in geographical distribution, so that towards northeast within the South Swedish region the percentage of a rising pat-tern has increased, while there is a corresponding tendency for the fall-rise to be a more a frequent pattern towards northwest. The occurrence of the rising pattern of initial accent I in South Swedish could be seen as an influence from an...

This pilot study investigates the Estonian Swedish (ES) voiceless lateral [ɬ], which is rare among the Scandinavian dialects and is a development mainly of historic /sl/ clusters. Six elderly ES speakers were recorded, and the phonological and phonetic (duration, relative intensity) properties of [ɬ] studied and compared to other ES consonants and [ɬ] in Icelandic. The results suggest that ES [ɬ] is a single consonant rather than a consonant cluster. It behaves much like initial [s] in duration, although a tendency to anticipatory voicing in its latter part may point to its 'approximant' status. Furthermore, ES [ɬ] is similar in intensity to the Icelandic [ɬ]. It has a phonemic status and it can be both short and long. Laterals as well as other phonetic aspects of ES are in urgent need of further research.