Fenno‐Swedish Quantity: Contrast in Stratal OT

Abstract

Compared to more familiar varieties of Swedish, the dialects spoken in Finland have rather diverse syllable structures. The distribution of distinctive syllable weight is determined by grammatical factors, and by varying effects of final consonant weightlessness. In turn it constrains several gemination processes which create derived superheavy syllables, in an unexpected way which provides evidence for an anti-neutralization constraint. Stratal OT, which integrates OT with Lexical Phonology, sheds light on these complex quantity systems. 1 The weight of stressed syllables 1.1 Light stressed syllables1 The bimoraic minimum: Sweden vs. Finland. In most Swedish dialects of Sweden (here referred to as West Swedish for short), stressed syllables are minimally bimoraic: they must contain at least a long vowel (-VV-) or a closed syllable (-VC-).2 Words like (1a) are therefore impossible. Because word-final consonants are weightless (“extrametrical”) in Swedish, the two-mora minimum also excludes monosyllabic words with -VC rhymes (see (1b)): (1) a. *[ro], *[ro.da], *[ro.a], *[no.gra] b. *[ro(d)] The Swedish dialects of Finland present a more varied picture. Only parts of Aland have the two-mora minimum (e.g. Brando and Kumlinge in the northeastern part of the island, Sundberg 1993:131 ff.). All other Fenno-Swedish dialects allow light (i.e. monomoraic) stressed syllables as a distinctive syllable type: (2) [daga], [dagar] ‘days’, [viku] ‘week’, [veliN] ‘gruel’, [suvel] ‘food eaten with bread, sowl’, [somar] ‘summer’, [stygu] ‘hut’, [paron] ‘potato(es)’, [hakon] ‘the chin’, [hole] ‘the hole’, [segla] ‘to sail’, [tala] ‘to talk’, [sita] ‘to sit’, [myky]3 ‘much’, [stad0gari] ‘steadier’, [snidit] ‘askew’, [Uyvu] ‘twenty’ Fenno-Swedish, then, has a lexical contrast between stressed CV, CVC, and CVV syllables:4 (3) a. [baka] ‘bake’ (99), [baaket] ‘after’ (adv.) (114), [bakkan] ‘the hill’ (114) b. [vaten] ‘water’ (102), [maaten] ‘the food’, [natten] ‘the night’ (70) c. [betar] ‘better’ (51), [fleetor] ‘braids’ (43), [tvettar] ‘washes’ (51) Even though stressed CV syllables are allowed, words of the form CV are categorically excluded in all the dialects (except for function words, on which see below).5 As for words of the form CVC, the dialects are divided. Most allow them:6 1The information on Fenno-Swedish dialects given here is based primarily on the 29 transcribed dialect texts in Harling-Kranck 1998, with accompanying tapes, as well as on the brief grammatical sketches of the dialects provided there. Page references below are to that work, unless otherwise specified. For supplementary information on particular points I have consulted the additional dialect monographs cited below. Special thanks are due to Mikael Reuter, for valuable discussion of Helsinki Swedish, and for generously providing me with a copy of his unpublished thesis (Reuter 1982). 2Except where otherwise stated, the generalizations stated here hold for phonological words. Each member of a compound constitutes a separate phonological word. 3Here and throughout I ignore dialectal variation in pronunciation where it is not relevant to the analysis of syllable weight. For instance, dialects with palatalization before front vowels have [myUy] or [myUi] instead of [myky]. 4In phonetic transcriptions of Fenno-Swedish, I adhere to IPA standards except that I mark vowel and consonant length by gemination, so as to conform with the phonological (lexical) representations, and to allow convenient marking of syllable boundaries (by “.”). Italics are reserved for citing word in Swedish spelling, which will be done for standard West Swedish and standard Helsinki Swedish only. 5The single contrary example is ga [ga] ‘go’ in Vora (central Ostrobothnia, Harling-Kranck 1998:121), apparently a fast speech variant of that dialect’s normal [gaa]. 6The contrast between /CVC/ and /CVCC/ is clearest before a vowel in close contact, e.g. [hol i mitten] ‘hole in the middle’, [r0nn o] ‘round too’ (H.-K. 22). The /CVC/ words are partly retentions of Proto-Nordic /CVC/, partly analogical reintroductions (Hulden 1957:122), and partly apocopated from CVCV at different periods.