Final aspiration as a phrase boundary cue in Swedish: the case of att 'that'

The Swedish word att /at/ is associated with two grammatical functions: a) (part of) a subordinate conjunction and b) an infinitive marker. This pilot study, with 5 short spontaneous discourses from 3 male speakers shows a correlation between pauses after att, and aspiration of /t/ in att, where aspiration can be interpreted as a kind of final lengthening involving the release phase of the stop consonant. We also show a tendency for att with aspiration to be associated with the grammatical function of subordinate conjunction. Further, we are able to show a tendency for the infinitive marker to be unaspirated in the normal case, while the subordinate conjunctions are characterized by final aspiration in 40 % of the cases.