Vestjysk stød, Icelandic preaspiration, and Proto-Indo-European glottalic stops

Old Norse taka, Gothic tekan, Greek τεταγών

“…Theories which derive the western Danish glottalization from preaspiration or gemination, the West Norse preaspiration from gemination and the East Norse gemination from preaspiration, or the rise of glottalization, preaspiration and several layers of gemination from spontaneous local developments are all inadequate (cf. especially Kortlandt 1988). In addition to the arguments which I have adduced elsewhere, I may now add an irrefutable piece of evidence from Faroese, which has preserved preaspiration before intervocalic plosives after originally short vowels, e.g.…”

Proto-Indo-European *a

“…Indeed, the acute cannot be explained otherwise (Lubotsky 1989: 59). Other possible traces of a laryngeal are the velar in OE tācor (Kortlandt 1988: 356, Kroonen 2013 and the initial voiceless reflex in Pers. dial.…”

Reconstructing the Obstruents of Proto-Germanic

“…In a number of papers Kortlandt (1988a, b;2000; has suggested that the ejectives that both he and I reconstruct for Proto-Indo-European changed into preglottalised stops in Proto-Germanic before they became plain voiceless stops in the individual daughter languages. Preglottalisation is still to be found in British English as the so-called 'glottal reinforcement' of p, t, c and k, and in the dialects of West Jutland (Denmark) as the 'vestjysk stød,' i.e.…”

“…the glottal variants of BrE, HP) is an interval of laryngealised voice quality." Kortlandt (2003) assumes that BrE glottalisation is old, and recessive. Docherty et al (1997) think that it is expansive in some varieties of RP, but recessive in Tyneside English.…”

“…The more or less implicit (pre-)stop present in n, m and l "surfaces" in the clusters sn, rn, nn, sm, sl, rl, ll, which are pronounced as: stn, rtn, tn, spm, stl, rtl, tl, e. In view of the geographical distribution of preaspiration in Scandinavia it seems likely that it dates back to at least the period before the break-up of the parent language (Proto-Norse) into a multitude of dialects in the post-Viking era. Kortlandt (1988aKortlandt ( -b, 2000Kortlandt ( , 2003 assumes that the preaspirated stops found in North Germanic are the reflexes of preglottalised stops in Proto-Germanic, and hence, that the history of preaspiration is the history of its loss in most of the contexts in which it once occurred. This theory faces a number of difficulties.…”