A diachronic account of Present Day Standard Danish stop gradation: Phonological reorganization through prosodically conditioned chain shifts and mergers

In certain contexts, Present Day Standard Danish displays an unusual pattern of alternations between voiceless stops and semivowels often referred to as stop gradation. Stop gradation is traditionally considered a synchronic phonological process, but evidence for this analysis is based almost exclusively on non-productive morphology. Here, we argue that the structural generalization captured by a synchronic analysis is better accounted for with reference to the history of Danish, and to well-understood constraints on articulation and perception which led to prosodically conditioned chain shifts and mergers through gradual, continuous changes in the realization of consonant allophones. Inspired by the change-chance-choice model of sound change in Evolutionary Phonology, we outline the historical trajectory that led to the synchronic stop gradation patterns, and the well-known phonetic pressures underlying them; these pressures pulled the allophone distributions of stops in different prosodic contexts in very different directions.