Danish tonal accent

Oskar,

your mail was one of the ones I lost, so I'm replying to what I can
remember.

Regarding the relation to Norwegian and Swedish tonal accents, it's
commonly accepted that the corresponding phenomenon in Danish is the
stød (sometimes called a glottal stop --- but it's not a consonant
like in Cockney or Hawai'ian, it's a feature of the syllable).

Also, <dreng> /drE?N/ has stød, the plural <drenge> doesn't --- and a
stød does entail a drop in pitch, so there's your difference.

It's also true that in connected speech, the plural <drenge> does not
end in a schwa. 'Officially' it's /drEN@/, but it's often much more
like /drEN:=/, where the schwa is totally assimilated to the preceding
eng. Similar things happen with all the continuants for which I can
come up with an example: <fad>/<fade> /faD/ / /f{:D:=/, <sal>/<sale>
/sal/ / /s{:l:=/, <tur>/<ture> /tu?Q/ / /tu:Q/ and so on.

(Note that words without stød in the singular often have a longer
vowel in the plural, helping to maintain the difference even though
the assimilation of the schwa reduces it).

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)