Cover not available
Part of
Language Variation – European Perspectives VIII: Selected papers from the Tenth International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 10), Leeuwarden, June 2019
Edited by Hans Van de Velde, Nanna Haug Hilton and Remco Knooihuizen
[Studies in Language Variation 25] 2021
► pp. 79–110

Chapter 4
Modeling regional variation in voice onset time of Jutlandic varieties of Danish

ORCID logo | Universiteit Leiden
It is a well-known overt feature of the Northern Jutlandic variety of Danish that /t/ is pronounced with short voice onset time and no affrication. This is not limited to Northern Jutland, but shows up across the peninsula. This paper expands on this research, using a large corpus to show that complex geographical patterns of variation in voice onset time is found in all fortis stops, but not in lenis stops. Modeling the data using generalized additive mixed modeling both allows us to explore these geographical patterns in detail, as well as test a number of hypotheses about how a number of environmental and social factors affect voice onset time.
Keywords: Danish, Jutlandic, phonetics, microvariation, regional variation, stop realization, voice onset time, aspiration, generalized additive mixed modeling
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical preliminaries
    • 2.1Voice onset time
    • 2.2Danish plosives
    • 2.3The dialects of Jutland
    • 2.4Language variation and geography
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Corpus
    • 3.2Token selection
    • 3.3Acoustic analysis
    • 3.4Statistical modeling
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Descriptive statistics
    • 4.2Generalized additive mixed model
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 16 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.25.04pug
References (111)
References
Aakjær, Svend. 1925. Tingsted og Maalkærne. Frem A 1, 571–575.Google Scholar
Abramson, Arthur S. & D. H. Whalen. 2017. Voice Onset Time (VOT) at 50. Theoretical and practical issues in measuring voicing distinctions. Journal of Phonetics 63. 75–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Allen, J. Sean, Joanne L. Miller & David DeSteno. 2003. Individual talker differences in voice-onset-time. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 113(1). 544–552. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Andersen, Poul. 1955. “Klusilspring” i danske Dialekter. Nordisk Tidsskrift for Tale og Stemme 15(1). 70–77.Google Scholar
Andersen, Torben Arboe. 1981. Dialektbånd og databehandling. Ord & Sag 1. 11–18.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald, Jacolien van Rij, Cecile de Cat & Simon N. Wood. 2018. Autocorrelated errors in experimental data in the language sciences. Some solutions offered by generalized additive mixed models. In Dirk Speelman, Kris Heylen & Dirk Geeraerts (eds.), Mixed-effects regression models in linguistics (Quantitative Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences), 49–69. Cham: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benjamin, Barbaranne J. 1982. Phonological performance in gerontological speech. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 11(2). 159–167. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bennike, Valdemar & Marius Kristensen. 1912. Kort over de danske folkemål med forklaringer. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel.Google Scholar
Berry, Jeff & Maura Moyle. 2011. Covariation among vowel height effects on acoustic measures. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 130(5). 365–371. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blumstein, Sheila E., Emily B. Myers & Jesse Rissman. 2005. The perception of voice onset time. An fMRI investigation of phonetic category structure. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 17(9). 1353–1366. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul & David Weenink. 2018. Praat. Doing phonetics by computer. Version 6.0.43. [URL].
Britain, David. 2010. Conceptualizations of geographic space in linguistics. In Alfred Lameli, Roland Kehrein & Stefan Rabanus (eds.), Language and space. An international handbook of linguistic variation. Volume 2: Language mapping (Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science 30/2), 69–102. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brøndum-Nielsen, Johs. 1927. Dialekter og dialektforskning. Copenhagen: J.H. Schulz.Google Scholar
Chambers, J. K. 2000. Region and language variation. English World-Wide 21(2). 169–199. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chambers, J. K. & Peter Trudgill. 1998. Dialectology (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics). 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cho, Taehong, Gerard J. Docherty & D. H. Whalen (eds.). 2018. Marking 50 years of research on voice onset time. Special issue of Journal of Phonetics 71.Google Scholar
Cho, Taehong & Patricia A. Keating. 2001. Articulatory and acoustic studies on domain-initial strengthening in Korean. Journal of Phonetics 29. 155–190. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cho, Taehong & Peter Ladefoged. 1999. Variation and universals in VOT. Evidence from 18 languages. Journal of Phonetics 27. 207–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chodroff, Eleanor, Alessandra Golden & Colin Wilson. 2019. Covariation of stop voice onset time across languages. Evidence for a universal constraint on phonetic realization. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 145(1). 106–115. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chodroff, Eleanor & Colin Wilson. 2017. Structure in talker-specific phonetic realization. Covariation of stop consonant VOT in American English. Journal of Phonetics 61. 30–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Lisa. 2016. Variability in the implementation of voicing in American English obstruents. Journal of Phonetics 54. 35–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Docherty, Gerard J. 1992. The timing of voicing in British English obstruents (Netherlands Phonetics Archives 9). Berlin & New York: Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ejskjær, Inger. 1990. Stød and pitch accents in the Danish dialects. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 22(1). 49–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ejstrup, Michael. 2010. På godt forskelligt dansk. Nydanske Sprogstudier 39. 93–136. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fasiolo, Matteo, Raphaël Nedellec, Yannig Goude, Christian Capezza & Simon N. Wood. 2020. mgcViz. Visualisations for generalized additive models. Version 0.1.6. [URL].
Fasiolo, Matteo, Raphaël Nedellec, Yannig Goude & Simon N. Wood. 2019. Scalable visualization methods for modern generalized additive models. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fischer-Jørgensen, Eli. 1972. ptk et bdg français en position intervocalique accentuée. In Albert Valdman (ed.), Papers in linguistics and phonetics to the memory of Pierre Delattre (Janua Linguarum 54), 143–200. The Hague & Paris: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1980. Temporal relations in Danish tautosyllabic CV sequences with stop consonants. Annual Report of the Institute of Phonetics, University of Copenhagen 14. 207–261.Google Scholar
Francis, Alexander L., Valter Ciocca & Jojo Man Ching Yu. 2003. Accuracy and variability of acoustic measures of voicing onset. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 113(2). 1025–1032. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gauchat, Louis. 1903. Gibt es Mundartgrenzen? Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen 111. 365–403.Google Scholar
Gilliéron, Jules & Edmond Edmont. 1902–1910. Atlas linguistique de la France. Paris: Champion.Google Scholar
Goldshtein, Yonatan. 2019. Towards a dialectology of tone in South Jutland. Paper presented at the 10th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe, Fryske Akademy, Leeuwarden.
Goldshtein, Yonatan & Liv Moeslund Ahlgreen. Forthcoming. Ideologies of language and place. Negotiations of dialectal authenticity in traditional Danish dialectology. To be published in Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics 4.
Goldshtein, Yonatan & Rasmus Puggaard. 2019. Overblik over danske dialektoptagelser. Ord & Sag 39, 18–28Google Scholar
Gooskens, Charlotte. 2005. Traveling time as a predictor of linguistic distance. Dialectologia et Geolinguistica 13. 38–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gósy, Mária. 2001. The VOT of the Hungarian voiceless plosives in words and in spontaneous speech. International Journal of Speech Technology 4. 75–85. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grønnum, Nina. 1998. Illustrations of the IPA. Danish. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 28(1/2). 99–105. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. Fonetik og fonologi. Almen og dansk. 3rd ed. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.Google Scholar
Gudiksen, Asgerd & Henrik Hovmark. 2008. Båndoptagelser som kilde til Ømålsordbogen. Nordiske Studier i Leksikografi 9. 173–182.Google Scholar
Hansen, Aage. 1971. Den lydlige udvikling i dansk. Fra ca. 1300 til nutiden II: Konsonantismen. Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gad.Google Scholar
Hansen, Inger Schoonderbek. 2008. Jysk Ordbog. Rapport fra en digital ordbog. Nordiske Studier i Leksikografi 9. 209–218.Google Scholar
Hanson, Helen M. 2009. Effects of obstruent consonants on fundamental frequency at vowel onset in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 125(1). 425–441. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hay, Jennifer & Paul Foulkes. 2016. The evolution of medial /t/ over real and remembered time. Language 92(2). 298–330. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Higgins, Maureen B., Ronald Netsell & Laura Schulte. 1998. Vowel-related differences in laryngeal articulatory and phonatory function. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 41. 712–724. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hovdhaugen, Even, Fred Karlsson, Carol Henriksen & Bengt Sigurd. 2000. The history of linguistics in the Nordic countries. Helsinki: Societas Scientarum Fennica.Google Scholar
Hovmark, Henrik. 2006. Ømålsordbogen mellem synkroni og diakroni. LexicoNordika 13. 129–145.Google Scholar
Hullebus, Marc A., Stephen J. Tobin & Adamantios I. Gafos. 2018. Speaker-specific structure in German voiceless stop voice onset times. Proceedings of Interspeech, 1403–1407. Hyderabad: International Speech Communication Association. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jensen, J. M. 1902. Et vendelbomåls lyd- og formlære. Copenhagen: H.H. Thieles Bogtrykkeri.Google Scholar
JO = Jysk Ordbog. Edited by the Peter Skautrup Center for Jutlandic Dialect Research, Aarhus University. [URL].
Keshet, Joseph, Morgan Sonderegger & T. Knowles. 2014. AutoVOT. A tool for automatic measurement of voice onset time using discriminative structured prediction. Version 0.91. [URL].
Kirby, James P. & D. Robert Ladd. 2016. Effects of obstruent voicing on vowel F0. Evidence from “true voicing” languages. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 140(4). 2400–2411. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klatt, Dennis H. 1975. Voice onset time, frication, and aspiration in word-initial consonant clusters. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 18. 686–706. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kraehenmann, Astrid. 2001. Swiss German stops. Geminates all over the word. Phonology 18. 109–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kristiansen, Tore. 1990. Udtalenormering i skolen. Skitse af en ideologisk bastion. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.Google Scholar
. 1998. The role of standard ideology in the disappearance of the traditional Danish dialects. Folia Linguistica 32(1/2). 115–129. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003a. Danish. In Ana Deumert & Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Germanic standardizations. Past to present (Impact: Studies in Language and Society 18), 69–91. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003b. Language attitudes and language politics in Denmark. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 159. 57–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19(3). 273–309. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert. 2011. Phonetics in phonology. In John Goldsmith, Jason Riggle & Alan C. L. Yu (eds.), The handbook of phonological theory (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics), 348–373. 2nd ed. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lisker, Leigh & Arthur S. Abramson. 1964. A cross-language study of voicing in initial stops. Acoustical measurements. Word 20. 384–422. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1967. Some effects of context on voice onset time in English stops. Language and Speech 10(1). 10–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maegaard, Marie & Malene Monka. 2019. Patterns of dialect use. Language standardization at different rates. In Marie Maegaard, Malene Monka, Kristine Køhler Mortensen & Andreas Candefors Stæhr (eds.), Standardization as sociolinguistic change. A transversal study of three traditional dialect areas (Routledge Studies in Language Change), 27–46. London & New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matthiessen, Christian Wichmann. 1985. Danske byers folketal 1801–1981 (Statistiske Undersøgelser 42). Copenhagen: Danmarks Statistik.Google Scholar
Meulman, Nienke, Martijn Wieling, Simone A. Sprenger, Laurie A. Stowe & Monika S. Schmid. 2015. Age effects in L2 grammar processing as revealed by ERPs and how (not) to study them. Plos One 10(12). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Möbius, Bernd. 2004. Corpus-based investigations on the phonetics of consonant voicing. Folia Linguistica 38(1/2). 5–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Monka, Malene. 2019. Southern Jutland. Language ideology as a means to slow down dialect leveling. In Marie Maegaard, Malene Monka, Kristine Køhler Mortensen & Andreas Candefors Stæhr (eds.), Standardization as sociolinguistic change. A transversal study of three traditional dialect areas (Routledge Studies in Language Change), 47–89. London & New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Monka, Malene & Henrik Hovmark. 2016. Sprogbrug blandt unge i Bylderup anno 2015. Danske Talesprog 16. 73–114.Google Scholar
Mortensen, Johannes & John Tøndering. 2013. The effect of vowel height on voice onset time in stop consonants in CV sequences in spontaneous Danish. Proceedings of Fonetik 2013. The XXVIth annual phonetics meeting, 49–52. Linköping University.Google Scholar
Neiman, Gary S., Richard J. Klich & Elaine M. Shuey. 1983. Voice onset time in young and 70-year-old women. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 26. 118–123. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nerbonne, John & Wilbert Heeringa. 2007. Geographic distributions of linguistic variation reflect dynamics of differentiation. In Sam Featherston & Wolfgang Sternefeld (eds.), Roots. Linguistics in search of its evidential base (Studies in Generative Grammar 96), 267–297. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nixon, Jessie S., Jacolien van Rij, Peggy Mok, R. Harald Baayen & Yiya Chen. 2016. The temporal dynamics of perceptual uncertainty. Eye movement evidence from Cantonese segment and tone perception. Journal of Memory and Language 90. 103–125. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paris, Gaston. 1888. Les parlers de France. Revue des patois gallo-romans 2. 161–175.Google Scholar
Pedersen, Inge Lise. 2003. Traditional dialects of Danish and the de-dialectalization 1900–2000. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 159. 9–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pedersen, Karen Margrethe. 1983. Om transskription af båndoptagelser og anvendelse af teksterne til leksikografiske og syntaktiske undersøgelser. Et EDB-projekt. Folkmålsstudier 28. 131–138.Google Scholar
Puggaard, Rasmus. 2018. Realizations of /t/ in Jutlandic dialects of Danish. Linguistica Lettica 26, 368–393.Google Scholar
. 2019. Flexibility of frequent clause openers in talk-in-interaction. The Danish front fields det “it, that” and så “then.” Nordic Journal of Linguistics 42(3), 291–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2020. Replication data, metadata, and scripts for study of regional variation in VOT of Jutlandic varieties of Danish. DataverseNL. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Puggaard, Rasmus & Yonatan Goldshtein. 2020. Realization and representation of plosives in Jutlandic varieties of Danish. Variation in phonetics predicts variation in phonology. Paper presented at Laboratory Phonology 17, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. [URL].
R Core Team. 2020. R. A language and environment for statistical computing. Version 4.0.0. [URL].
Ryalls, Jack, Marni Simon & Jerry Thomason. 2004. Voice onset time production in older Caucasian- and African-Americans. Journal of Multilingual Communication Disorders 2(1). 61–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ryalls, John, Alison Zipprer & Penelope Baldauff. 1997. A preliminary investigation of the effects of gender and race on voice onset time. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 40. 642–645. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schachtenhaufen, Ruben. 2010. Looking for lost syllables in Danish spontaneous speech. In Peter Juel Henrichsen (ed.), Linguistic theory and raw sound (Copenhagen Studies in Language 40), 61–85. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur.Google Scholar
Scheuer, Jann, Anne Larsen, Marie Maegaard, Malene Monka & Kristine Køhler Mortensen. 2019. Language ideologies. A key to understanding language standardization. In Marie Maegaard, Malene Monka, Kristine Køhler Mortensen & Andreas Candefors Stæhr (eds.), Standardization as sociolinguistic change. A transversal study of three traditional dialect areas (Routledge Studies in Language Change), 189–218. London & New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schouten, M. E. H. & Arjan van Hessen. 1992. Modeling phoneme perception. I: Categorical perception. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 92(4). 1841–1855. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Séguy, Jean. 1973. La dialectométrie dans l’Atlas linguistique de Gascogne. Revue de Linguistique Romane 37(145). 1–24.Google Scholar
Simos, Panagiotis G., Randy L. Diehl, Joshua I. Breier, Michelle R. Molis, George Zouridakis & Andrew C. Papanicolaou. 1998. MEG correlates of categorical perception of a voice onset time continuum in humans. Cognitive Brain Research 7. 215–219. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Skautrup, Peter. 1930. Hardiske mål 1. Copenhagen: Th. Linds Efterfølger.Google Scholar
. 1937. Dialektkriterier og deres værdi. Sprog og kultur 6. 59–80.Google Scholar
. 1952. Sammenhænge i dialektal udvikling. In Jørgen Glahder (ed.), Runer og rids. Festskrift til Lis Jacobsen, 95–103. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger.Google Scholar
. 1968. Det danske sprogs historie IV. Fra J.P. Jacobsen til Johs. V. Jensen. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.Google Scholar
Sóskuthy, Márton. 2017. Generalised additive mixed models for dynamic analysis in linguistics. A practical introduction. Unpublished manuscript. [URL].
Stuart-Smith, Jane, Morgan Sonderegger, Tamara Rathcke & Rachel Macdonald. 2015. The private life of stops. VOT in a real-time corpus of spontaneous Glaswegian. Laboratory Phonology 6(3/4). 505–548. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swartz, Bradford L. 1992. Gender difference in voice onset time. Perceptual and Motor Skills 75. 983–992. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thorsen, Peder Kristian. 1912/1927. Den berømteste Dialektgrænse i Danmark. In Jens Byskov & Marius Kristensen (eds.), Afhandlinger og Breve, vol. 2, 107–135. Copenhagen: Schønbergske Forlag.Google Scholar
Torre, Peter & Jessica A. Barlow. 2009. Age-related changes in acoustic characteristics of adult speech. Journal of Communication Disorders 42. 324–333. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 1974. Linguistic change and diffusion. Description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect geography. Language in Society 2. 215–246. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Rij, Jacolien, Martijn Wieling, R. Harald Baayen & Hedderik van Rijn. 2020. itsadug. Interpreting time series and autocorrelated data using GAMMs. R package version 2.4. [URL].
Wenker, Georg & Ferdinand Wrede. 1895. Der Sprachatlas des deutschen Reichs. Marburg: Elwert.Google Scholar
Wickham, Hadley. 2016. ggplot2. Elegant graphics for data analysis (Use R). New York: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wickham, Hadley, Winston Chang, Lionel Henry, Thomas Lin Pedersen, Kohske Takahashi, Claus Wilke, Kara Woo, Hiroaki Yutani, Dewey Dunnington & RStudio. 2020b. ggplot2. Create elegant data visualizations using the grammar of graphics. R package version 3.3.0. [URL].
Wickham, Hadley, Romain François, Lionel Henry & Kirill Müller. 2020a. dplyr. A grammar of data manipulation. R package version 0.8.5. [URL].
Wieling, Martijn. 2018. Analyzing dynamic phonetic data using generalized additive mixed modeling. A tutorial focusing on articulatory differences between L1 and L2 speakers of English. Journal of Phonetics 70. 86–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wieling, Martijn, Simonetta Montemagni, John Nerbonne & R. Harald Baayen. 2014. Lexical differences between Tuscan dialects and Standard Italian. Accounting for geographic and sociodemographic variation using generalized additive mixed modeling. Language 90(3). 669–692. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wieling, Martijn & John Nerbonne. 2015. Advances in dialectometry. Annual Review of Linguistics 1. 243–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wieling, Martijn, John Nerbonne & R. Harald Baayen. 2011. Quantitative social dialectology. Explaining linguistic variation geographically and socially. Plos One 6(9). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wieling, Martijn, Fabian Tomaschek, Denis Arnold, Mark Tiede, Franziska Bröker, Samuel Thiele, Simon N. Wood & R. Harald Baayen. 2016. Investigating dialectal differences using articulography. Journal of Phonetics 59. 122–143. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wood, Simon N. 2003. Thin plate regression splines. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B 65(1). 95–114. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017. Generalized additive models. An introduction with R (Texts in Statistical Science). 2nd ed. Boca Raton: CRC Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2019. mgcv. Mixed GAM computation vehicle with automatic smoothness estimation. R package version 1.8–31. [URL].
Wood, Simon N., Zheyuan Li, Gavin Shaddick & Nicole H. Augustin. 2017. Generalized additive models for gigadata. Modeling the U.K. Black Smoke network daily data. Journal of the American Statistical Association 112(519). 1199–1210. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wrede, Ferdinand. 1919. Zur Entwiklungsgeschichte der deutschen Mundartenforschung. Zeitschrift für Deutsche Mundarten 14. 3–18.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Puggaard-Rode, Rasmus
2024. Variation in fine phonetic detail can modulate the outcome of sound change: The case of stop gradation and laryngeal contrast implementation in Jutland Danish. Journal of Phonetics 106 ► pp. 101354 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.