phonetic study of the stød in Standard Danish

Abstract

Chapter I gives a brief survey of phonological interpretations of the Danish stød, the dialectal and historical background, and previous phonetic investigations. 
 Chapter II gives an account of the material, subjects and procedures used in the present investigation. 
 Chapter III contains the results. In accordance with Svend Smith a distinction is made between the first and the second phase of the stød.
 The first phase is characterized acoustically by a higher pitch level and often a higher intensity level than syllables without stød, and by a relatively high subglottal pressure and airflow, thus generally by a relatively high expenditure of energy. In the second phase, the stød phase proper, there is a strong decrease in intensity, particularly in the lower part of the spectrum and, for the majority of the speakers, a noticeable decrease in fundamental frequency and/or aperiodicity. Moreover the airflow is low, and inverse filtering shows a decreasing amplitude of glottal flow peaks. There is also a slight decrease in subglottal pressure, and all speakers have a constriction of the vocal folds and often of the ventricular folds as well, but with large interindividual variation as to the degree of constriction. On the boundary between the first and the second phase most speakers have a strong contraction of the vocalis and lateralis muscles, obviously preparing for the glottis constriction of the second phase.
 Chapter IV discusses the stød in relation to phonation types and concludes that the stød is closely related to creaky voice though without sharing all of its characteristic features.
 Moreover the causal relations among the various properties of the Danish stød are discussed. The author cannot follow Svend Smith in assuming that a sudden contraction and relaxation of the respiratory muscles resulting in a quick rise and fall in subglottal pressure, constitute the primary factor. There is rather an independent contraction of a number of muscles, and neither the high pitch in the start nor the fall in pitch and intensity in the second phase can be explained by the subglottal pressure contour. The high pitch level in the start may be explained by activity in the cricothyroid, and the decrease in pitch and the low intensity in the second phase is probably due to the glottis constriction, although the fact that the decrease in intensity starts rather early, raises some problems.
 Finally the question of the origin of the stød is taken up again. It is suggested that the stød in Danish perhaps originated from a reinforcement of the first syllable due to reduction and loss of a following syllable in common Scandinavian. The reinforcement may have been accompanied by a rise in pitch so that developments in different directions (involving stød or tonal accents) were possible.

Three quarters of a century of phonetic research on common Danish stød

“…But the point of departure may also be a quest for a phonetic underpinning of a particular phonological analysis. Thus, for instance, building on prior investigations of vowel and consonant duration and the timing of the onset of creakiness (Petersen 1973; Fischer-Jørgensen 1987), Basbøll (1988) proposed that Danish syllables have moraic structure, and that stød is a property of the second mora in bimoraic syllables. He specified that non-sonorant consonants cannot be moraic in Danish, and that trimoraic syllables are excluded (Basbøll 1989, 2005:292, 2021).…”

“…The term stød is also due to him. It means ‘push’ or ‘thrust’, and he described it impressionistically as resembling a very little hiccup ( et meget lidet hik ) that arises when the pharynx closes and cuts off the breath ( svælget lukker sig for ånden – Fischer-Jørgensen surmises that ‘Høysgaard … hardly made any distinction between pharynx and larynx’ 1987:72).…”

“…That same observation was subsequently made repeatedly – albeit in experiments of somewhat limited scope in terms of number of speakers and recorded words – thus also in the last investigations to rely exclusively on the kymograph in stød investigations, that is, Ekblom (1933) and Abrahams (1949). See Fischer-Jørgensen (1987:72–74) for a fuller account of older descriptions and instrumental investigations of stød.…”

Danish, Estonian, English: Variations on a theme

“…Danish stød, exemplified in (1) and customarily marked by [ ʔ ], is a kind of laryngealisation on sonorants (for detailed phonetic studies cf. Fischer-Jørgensen 1987;1989;Grønnum & Vazquez-Larruscaín & Basbøll 2013). (1a) gives examples where stød occurs on a long vowel (more precisely: on the second half of the vowel); in this case the nature of the following consonant (or whether there even is one) is immaterial.…”

“…pen [pen ʔ ] 'pen' μ + μ = 2μ mild [mil ʔ ] 'mild' A characterisation in terms of moras makes it possible to express the requirements for stød to arise at all, and also allows us to pinpoint the exact location of stød, which is usually said to coincide with the second mora (Fischer-Jørgensen 1987;1989).…”