Re: Danish VOT

2008/11/11 Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...>:
> Lars Mathiesen wrote:>
>> quoting me:
I did leave in Benct's attribution line, didn't I?

>>>> the long intervocalic stops, those that paradoxically are written _kk_,
>>>> _pp_ and _tt_, are fully voiced, not perceptibly less voiced than the
>>>> Norwegian voiced stops.
>>
>> There are no phonemic long consonants in Danish; double writing is
>> solely a sign that the preceding vowel phoneme is short. (But there
>> are doubled consonants at morpheme boundaries, and lots of fully
>> assimilated consonant pairs, both of which phenomenee can give the
>> impression of consonant length).
>
> You sure about this? In the TV programme I mentioned, the pronunciation of
> the stops in words written with single intervocalic stops (apart from those
> that are dropped or affricated, of course) was dramatically different from
> those with the double ones mentioned above. In the former case, the
> consonant was of very brief duration and the voicing was barely audible, I'm
> still not quite sure I heard it (especially since it's a couple of days ago
> already), while in the latter case the voicing was very strong indeed and
> quite unmistakable, and the duration seemed to be markedly longer.
Note that I said that long consonants do not exist _phonemically_ in
Danish. There might be _phonetic_ differences in the realization of
lenes after long vowels, even though I can't hear any, but ...I happen
to have the description of Danish phonetics that Benct quoted, on my
desk right now, and it doesn't mention any such differences either.

One fun factor in play here is that many (but not all) long vowels in
Danish have creaky voice (stød), which might easily colour your
perception of the following stop. (Actually the creaky voice is a
possible feature of stressed syllables with 'long voice', i.e., long
vowel or short + voiced consonant (stops never being voiced), but I
don't think you're talking about the latter kind of word here).

Can you give examples of words where you hear stops respectively short
with little voicing and longer with more voicing?

(If you're ever in Stockholm, I'll be happy to meet and talk Danish at
you until you've had enough).

--
Lars

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