The Phonetics-Phonology Interface in Swedish

How can we know whether a phonetically natural process in a given language is represented phonologically? One argument is that a process is phonological if it must precede other phonological processes (e.g. Andersson in prep. a on European Portuguese). This argument is applied here to two potentially phonetic phenomena in Standard Central Swedish: nasal place assimilation, and vowel centralisation before /r/. Both are argued to be phonological. Nasal place assimilation is shown to precede a process of vowel raising previously undocumented in the linguistic literature on Swedish. Phonetic evidence for this raising is presented, and it is shown that the feeding interaction of the two processes is fully productive even across word boundaries. Vowel centralisation is shown to precede unstressed vowel shortening (Andersson in prep. b), and this process interaction is fully productive in the Swedish language game rövarspråket. This counterfeeding interaction is a case of productive phonological opacity (see Andersson in prep. a). In conclusion, this presentation contributes to work on Swedish phonology by documenting an unreported phonological process. It also sheds light on Swedish nasal place assimilation – highly relevant for the phonetics-phonology interface. Finally, this work illustrates the importance of external evidence, used here to derive a theoretically significant result: productive phonological opacity exists. Andersson, Samuel. In prep. a. Phonological Theory: The View from European Portuguese. BA Dissertation: University of Cambridge. Andersson, Samuel. In prep. b. Sieves and Herrings: For Distinctive Vowel Length in Swedish. Lingbuzz/003136