Harðhljóð og linhljóð: Um aðröddunartíma í íslensku, sænsku og búlgörsku

Abstract

Voice Onset Time (VOT) is the time between the release of a stop consonent and the onset of voicing (vibrations in the vocal cords). This time is measured in ms and is negative for voiced stops and positive for unvoiced stops. VOT of +75ms and more is considered to indicated an aspirated stop.This thesis compares VOT of the fortis and lenis pairs of stop phonemes in Icelandic (which is normally considered to have unvoiced unaspirated vs unvoiced aspirated stop phonemes), Bulgarian (as all Slavic and Romance languages has voiced vs unvoiced stops) and Swedish (where the two phonemes in each pair have allophones that are either voiced, unvoiced unaspirated and unvoiced aspirated). The figures for Icelandic and Swedish were taken from previous works. The author measured VOT in Bulgarian for the sake of comparison.