Phonological contrasts in voice quality are assumed to be phonetically restricted to the segment(s) on which they are contrastive. However, in the suprasegmental stød (pronounced [støð̞]) in Danish, a contrastive laryngealisation akin to creaky voice, substantial variation occurs in the segmental span of non-modal phonation. In many cases it is continuously realised on the adjacent segment to the contrastive segment and may span up to four segments. This paper presents initial findings of this variation based on acoustic data from 21 native Danish speakers of the Copenhagen (10) and Aarhus dialect (11). It shows that variation in segmental span correlates significantly with the dialect of the speaker and the phonetic realisation of the contrast. Thus, this paper contributes novel findings on the possible quantitative scope of phonetic variation in phonological voice quality contrasts and the role of such variation in dialectal differences as well as
individual speaker idiosyncrasy.