title: Phonetic and dialectal variation in phonologically contrastive laryngealisation
title: A case study of the Danish stød
titleType: Subtitle
Creators: name: Siem, Andrea
Publisher: name: Lancaster University
Year: 2024

description: A growing body of research is documenting the variability of the phonetic
 manifestation of phonological contrasts in voice quality. This thesis is
 an empirical addition to the typology of cross-linguistic phonetic
 variation in the production of phonological laryngealisation.
 Investigating this variation is done through a comparative lens of
 dialectal differences within a language and with the Laryngeal Articulator
 Model (Esling et al 2019) as a guiding framework for investigating
 laryngealisation. Dialectal differences are analysed using the Danish stød
 as a case study, comparing speakers from Copenhagen and Aarhus. The stød
 has previously been reported to be highly variable in its production,
 making it an excellent source of phonetic variation. Further, the dialect
 of Aarhus has been speculated to contain a tonal stød variant under
 certain conditions (Kyst 2004) which has not yet been studied
 phonetically, making the inclusion of this dialect novel both in a
 typological perspective and in the context of the phonetics of the stød
 specifically. Data from 10 speakers of Modern Standard Copenhagen and 11
 speakers from Aarhus is analysed using both acoustic and articulatory
 measurements. Acoustic measures include fundamental frequency, intensity,
 the amplitude difference between the first and second harmonic (H1-H2),
 Cepstral Peak Prominence, Harmonics-to-Noise Ratio and
 Subharmonic-to-Harmonic Ratio. The articulatory measures are obtained via
 Electroglottography, a novel method in the context of investigating the
 stød, which enables the vocal fold contact patterns to be modelled for
 analysis. Three main research questions are explored: (i) how much
 gradient phonetic variation in voice quality occurs during the Danish stød
 (ii) which acoustic and articulatory measurements correlate with the
 subtypes of the stød and (iii) how the voice quality changes are timed.
 The different phonetic types of laryngealisation are categorised in
 reference to five subtypes of creaky voice described in Keating et al
 (2015). To accommodate the expected variation in the Aarhus dialect, the
 stød in divided into two types for analysis, regular and tonal, both
 elicited in a contrastive minimal pair. The differences are analysed
 dynamically using two different statistical methods, Generalised Additive
 Mixed Models and random forest models. The findings generally confirm that
 investigating dialectal differences when exploring types of contrastive
 non-modal phonation is a rich resource to draw upon in widening our
 empirical understanding of phonetic variation in phonological voice
 quality across different languages. They demonstrate that stød in Danish
 is not just one type of stød, and even the standard Copenhagen variant
 exhibits differences in acoustics and articulation based on its stød
 basis. The study of timing finds high variability but uncovers some
 general patterns according to stød type and dialects, solidifying timing
 as a rich source of phonetic differences. Lastly, the findings from this
 study support the notion that the larynx is an active articulator and that
 various structures within it can affect voice quality independent of
 activity in the glottis. This encourages more research into how these
 different laryngeal structures interplay and in what ways this affects
 commonly used acoustic and articulatory correlates of these mechanisms.