Prosodic structure and suprasegmental features: Short-vowel stød in Danish

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This paper sets out in detail the analysis first offered in my 21mfm presentation. I examine the so-called ‘short-vowel stød’ (kortvokalstød) found in certain island dialects of Danish, which differs from the ‘common Danish’ stød in that it is associated with light syllables (open syllable with short vowels or closed syllables with low-sonority codas) rather than heavy ones. I argue that it is best represented as a [constricted glottis] feature associated with a segmentally empty mora, which is projected due to top-down requirements on the internal structure of suprasegmental constituents. Thus, stød is interpreted as another example of a ‘tonal accent’ phenomenon that submits to an analysis purely in terms of lexically stored metrical structure. I also offer an extension of the model which allows the direct association of features to suprasegmental constituents to Icelandic preaspiration.