Glottal stop

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This article is about the sound in spoken language. For the letter, see Glottal stop (letter). For consonants followed by superscript ˀ, see Glottalization.
Glottal stop
ʔ
IPA Number113
Audio sample
Duration: 2 seconds.
Encoding
Entity (decimal)ʔ
Unicode (hex)U+0294
X-SAMPA?
Braille⠆ (braille pattern dots-23)

The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʔ⟩.

As a result of the obstruction of the airflow in the glottis, the glottal vibration either stops or becomes irregular with a low rate and sudden drop in intensity.[1]

Features[edit]

Features of the glottal stop:[citation needed]

Writing[edit]

See also: Glottal stop (letter)
Road sign in British Columbia showing the use of the digit ⟨7⟩ to represent /ʔ/ in Squamish.

In the traditional romanization of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with the apostrophe ⟨ʼ⟩ or the symbol ⟨ʾ⟩, which is the source of the IPA character ⟨ʔ⟩. In many Polynesian languages that use the Latin alphabet, however, the glottal stop is written with a rotated apostrophe, ⟨ʻ⟩ (called ʻokina in Hawaiian and Samoan), which is commonly used to transcribe the Arabic ayin as well (also ⟨ʽ⟩) and is the source of the IPA character for the voiced pharyngeal fricative ⟨ʕ⟩. In Malay the glottal stop is represented by the letter ⟨k⟩ (at the end of words), in Võro and Maltese by ⟨q⟩. Another way of writing the glottal stop is the saltillo ⟨Ꞌ ꞌ⟩, used in languages such as Tlapanec and Rapa Nui.

Other scripts also have letters used for representing the glottal stop, such as the Hebrew letter aleph ⟨א‎⟩ and the Cyrillic letter palochka ⟨Ӏ⟩, used in several Caucasian languages. The Arabic script uses hamza ⟨ء⟩, which can appear both as a diacritic and as an independent letter (though not part of the alphabet). In Tundra Nenets, it is represented by the letters apostrophe ⟨ʼ⟩ and double apostrophe ⟨ˮ⟩. In Japanese, glottal stops occur at the end of interjections of surprise or anger and are represented by the character ⟨っ⟩.

In the graphic representation of most Philippine languages, the glottal stop has no consistent symbolization. In most cases, however, a word that begins with a vowel-letter (e.g. Tagalog aso, "dog") is always pronounced with an unrepresented glottal stop before that vowel (as in Modern German and Hausa). Some orthographies use a hyphen instead of the reverse apostrophe if the glottal stop occurs in the middle of the word (e.g. Tagalog pag-ibig, "love"; or Visayan gabi-i, "night"). If it occurs in the end of a word, the last vowel can be written with a circumflex accent (known as the pakupyâ) if both a stress and a glottal stop occur in the final vowel (e.g. basâ, "wet") or a grave accent (known as the paiwà) if the glottal stop occurs at the final vowel, but the stress occurs at the penultimate syllable (e.g. batà, "child").[3][4][5]

Some Canadian indigenous languages, especially some of the Salishan languages, have adopted the IPA letter ⟨ʔ⟩ into their orthographies. In some of them, it occurs as a casing pair, ⟨Ɂ⟩ and ⟨ɂ⟩.[6] The digit ⟨7⟩ or a question mark is sometimes substituted for ⟨ʔ⟩, and is preferred in languages such as Squamish. SENĆOŦEN – whose alphabet is mostly unique from other Salish languages – contrastly uses the comma ⟨,⟩ to represent the glottal stop, though it is optional.

In 2015, two women in the Northwest Territories challenged the territorial government over its refusal to permit them to use the letter ⟨ʔ⟩ in their daughters' names: Sahaiʔa, a Chipewyan name, and Sakaeʔah, a Slavey name (the two names are actually cognates). The territory argued that territorial and federal identity documents were unable to accommodate the character. The women registered the names with hyphens instead of the ⟨ʔ⟩, while continuing to challenge the policy.[7]

In the Crow language, the glottal stop is written as a question mark ⟨?⟩. The only instance of the glottal stop in Crow is as a question marker morpheme at the end of a sentence.[8]

Use of the glottal stop is a distinct characteristic of the Southern Mainland Argyll dialects of Scottish Gaelic. In such a dialect, the standard Gaelic phrase Tha Gàidhlig agam ("I speak Gaelic"), would be rendered Tha Gàidhlig a'am.[citation needed]

In English[edit]

Replacement of /t/[edit]

In English, the glottal stop occurs as an open juncture (for example, between the vowel sounds in uh-oh!,[9]) and allophonically in t-glottalization. In British English, the glottal stop is most familiar in the Cockney pronunciation of "butter" as "bu'er". Geordie English often uses glottal stops for t, k, and p, and has a unique form of glottalization. Additionally, there is the glottal stop as a null onset for English; in other words, it is the non-phonemic glottal stop occurring before isolated or initial vowels.

Often a glottal stop happens at the beginning of vowel phonation after a silence.[1]

Although this segment is not a phoneme in English, it occurs phonetically in nearly all dialects of English, as an allophone of /t/ in the syllable coda. Speakers of Cockney, Scottish English and several other British dialects also pronounce an intervocalic /t/ between vowels as in city. In Received Pronunciation, a glottal stop is inserted before a tautosyllabic voiceless stop: stoʼp, thaʼt, knoʼck, waʼtch, also leaʼp, soaʼk, helʼp, pinʼch.[10][11]

In American English, a "t" is usually not aspirated in syllables ending either in a vowel + "t", such as "cat" or "outside"; or in a "t" + unstressed vowel + "n", such as "mountain" or "Manhattan". This is referred to as a "held t" as the airflow is stopped by tongue at the ridge behind the teeth. However, there is a trend of younger speakers in the Mid-Atlantic states to replace the "held t" with a glottal stop, so that "Manhattan" sounds like "Man-haʔ-in" or "Clinton" like "Cli(n)ʔ-in", where "ʔ" is the glottal stop. This may have crossed over from African American Vernacular English, particularly that of New York City.[12][13]

Before initial vowels[edit]

"hard attack" redirects here. For other uses, see Hard Attack.

Most English speakers today often use a glottal stop before the initial vowel of words beginning with a vowel, particularly at the beginning of sentences or phrases or when a word is emphasized. This is also known as "hard attack".[14] Traditionally in Received Pronunciation, "hard attack" was seen as a way to emphasize a word. Today, in British, American and other varieties of English, it is increasingly used not only to emphasize but also simply to separate two words, especially when the first word ends in a glottal stop.[clarification needed][15][14][16]

Occurrence in other languages[edit]

In many languages that do not allow a sequence of vowels, such as Persian, the glottal stop may be used epenthetically to prevent such a hiatus. There are intricate interactions between falling tone and the glottal stop in the histories of such languages as Danish (see stød), Cantonese and Thai.[citation needed]

In many languages, the unstressed intervocalic allophone of the glottal stop is a creaky-voiced glottal approximant. It is known to be contrastive in only one language, Gimi, in which it is the voiced equivalent of the stop. [citation needed]

The table below demonstrates how widely the sound of glottal stop is found among the world's spoken languages:

Family Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Northwest Caucasian Abkhaz аи/ai [ʔaj] 'no' See Abkhaz phonology.
Northwest Caucasian Adyghe ӏэ/'ė [ʔa] 'arm/hand'
Semitic Arabic Modern Standard[17] أغاني/ʿaġani [ʔaˈɣaːniː] 'songs' See Arabic phonology, Hamza.
Levantine and Egyptian[18] شقة/ša''a [ˈʃæʔʔæ] 'apartment' Corresponds to /q/ or /g/ in other dialects. See Levantine Arabic phonology and Egyptian Arabic phonology
Fasi and Tlemcenian[19] قال/'al [ˈʔaːl] 'he said' Corresponds to /q/ or /g/ in other dialects.
Turkic Azeri ər [ʔær] 'husband'
Kiranti Bantawa चा:वा [t͡saʔwa] 'drinking water'
Bikol Bikol bàgo [ˈbaːʔɡo] 'new'
Slavic Bulgarian ъ-ъ/ŭ-ŭ [ˈʔɤʔɤ] 'nope'
Sino-Tibetan Burmese မြစ်များ/mrac mya: [mjiʔ mjá] 'rivers'
Philippine Cebuano tubò [ˈtuboʔ] 'to grow'
Malayo-Polynesian Chamorro haluʼu [həluʔu] 'shark'
Sinitic Chinese Cantonese 愛/oi3 [ʔɔːi˧] 'love' See Cantonese phonology.
Wu 一级了/ih cih leh [ʔiɪʔ.tɕiɪʔ.ʔləʔ] 'superb'
Hokkien 合/ha̍h [hɐʔ˥] 'to suit'
Polynesian Cook Islands Māori taʻi [taʔi] 'one'
Slavic Czech používat [poʔuʒiːvat] 'to use' See Czech phonology.
Cushitic Dahalo maʼa [maʔa] 'water' see Dahalo phonology
Germanic Danish hånd [ˈhʌ̹nʔ] 'hand' One of the possible realizations of stød. Depending on the dialect and style of speech, it can be instead realized as laryngealisation of the preceding sound. See Danish phonology.
Germanic Dutch[20] beamen [bəʔˈaːmə(n)] 'to confirm' See Dutch phonology.
Germanic English Multiple dialects I [ʔaɪ ʔæm] (emphatic "am")) or [ʔaɪ æm] 'I' Glottal stop before initial vowel at the start of a phrase. Elsewhere, optionally, to emphasize a word or separate it from the previous one.[15][14]
RP uh-oh [ˈɐʔəʊ] 'uh-oh'
American [ˈʌʔoʊ]ⓘ
Australian cat [kʰæʔ(t)] 'cat' Allophone of /t/, /k/ or /p/. See glottalization, English phonology, and definite article reduction.
GA
Estuary [kʰæʔ]
Cockney[21] [kʰɛ̝ʔ]
Scottish [kʰäʔ]
Some Northern England the [ʔ] 'the'
Geordie thank you 'thank you'
Geordie people 'people'
RP[22] and GA button [ˈbɐʔn̩]ⓘ 'button'
Germanic German Northern Beamter [bəˈʔamtɐ] 'civil servant' Generally all vowel onsets. See Standard German phonology.
Tupi-Guarani Guaraní avañeʼẽ [ãʋ̃ãɲẽˈʔẽ] 'Guaraní' Occurs only between vowels.
Polynesian Hawaiian[23] ʻeleʻele [ˈʔɛlɛˈʔɛlɛ] 'black' See Hawaiian phonology.
Semitic Hebrew מַאֲמָר/ma'amar [maʔămaʁ] 'article' Often elided in casual speech. See Modern Hebrew phonology.
Germanic Icelandic en [ʔɛn] 'but' Only used according to emphasis, never occurring in minimal pairs.
Malayo-Polynesian Iloko nalab-ay [nalabˈʔaj] 'bland tasting' Hyphen when occurring within the word.
Malayo-Polynesian Indonesian bakso [ˌbäʔˈso] 'meatball' Allophone of /k/ or /ɡ/ in the syllable coda.
Northeast-Caucasian Ingush кхоъ / qoʼ [qoʔ] 'three'
Japonic Japanese Kagoshima /kuQ/ [kuʔ] 'neck'
Malayo-Polynesian Javanese[24] ꦲꦤꦏ꧀ [änäʔ] 'child' Allophone of /k/ in morpheme-final position.
Aslian Jedek[25] [wɛ̃ʔ] 'left side'
Northwest-Caucasian Kabardian ӏэ/'ė [ʔa] 'arm/hand'
Manobo Kagayanen[26] saag [saˈʔaɡ] 'floor'
Khasi-Palaungic Khasi lyoh [lʔɔːʔ] 'cloud'
Mon-Khmer Khmer សំអាត / sâmqat [sɑmʔɑːt] 'to clean' See Khmer phonology
Koreanic Korean 일/il [ʔil] 'one' In free variation with no glottal stop. Occurs only in initial position of a word.
Malayo-Polynesian Malay Standard tidak [ˈtidäʔ] 'no' Allophone of final /k/ in the syllable coda, pronounced before consonants and at end of the a word. In other positions, /ʔ/ has phonemic status only in loanwords from Arabic. See Malay phonology
Kelantan-Pattani ikat [ˌiˈkaʔ] 'to tie' Allophone of final /p, t, k/ in the syllable coda. Pronounced before consonants and at the end of a word.
Terengganu
Semitic Maltese qattus [ˈʔattus] 'cat'
Polynesian Māori Taranaki, Whanganui wahine [waʔinɛ] 'woman'
Malayo-Polynesian Minangkabau waʼang [wäʔäŋ] 'you' Sometimes written without an apostrophe.
Yok-Utian Mutsun tawkaʼli [tawkaʔli] 'black gooseberry' Ribes divaricatum
Kartvelian Mingrelian ჸოროფა/?oropha [ʔɔrɔpʰɑ] 'love'
Uto-Aztecan Nahuatl tahtli [taʔtɬi]ⓘ 'father' Often left unwritten.
Plateau-Penutian Nez Perce yáakaʔ [ˈjaːkaʔ] 'black bear'
Tupi-Guarani Nheengatu[27] ai [aˈʔi] 'sloth' Transcription (or absence thereof) varies.
Ryukyuan Okinawan 音/utu [ʔutu] 'sound'
Indo-Iranian Persian معنی/ma'ni [maʔni] 'meaning' See Persian phonology.
Slavic Polish era [ʔɛra] 'era' Most often occurs as an anlaut of an initial vowel (Ala ‒> [Ɂala]). See Polish phonology#Glottal stop.
Mura Pirahã baíxi [ˈmàí̯ʔì] 'parent'
Romance Portuguese[28] Vernacular Brazilian ê-ê[29] [ˌʔe̞ˈʔeː] 'yeah right'[30] Marginal sound. Does not occur after or before a consonant. In Brazilian casual speech, there is at least one [ʔ]–vowel length–pitch accent minimal pair (triply unusual, the ideophones short ih vs. long ih). See Portuguese phonology.
Some speakers à aula [ˈa ˈʔawlɐ] 'to the class'
Oceanic Rotuman[31] ʻusu [ʔusu] 'to box'
Polynesian Samoan maʻi [maʔi] 'sickness/illness'
Romance Sardinian[32] Some dialects of Barbagia unu pacu [ˈuːnu paʔu] 'a little' Intervocalic allophone of /n, k, l/.
Some dialects of Sarrabus sa luna [sa ʔuʔa] 'the moon'
Slavic Serbo-Croatian[33] i onda [iː ʔô̞n̪d̪a̠] 'and then' Optionally inserted between vowels across word boundaries.[33] See Serbo-Croatian phonology
Isolate Seri he [ʔɛ] 'I'
Cushitic Somali baʼ [baʔ] 'calamity' though /ʔ/ occurs before all vowels, it is only written medially and finally.[34] See Somali phonology
Romance Spanish Nicaraguan[35] más alto [ˈma ˈʔal̻t̻o̞] 'higher' Marginal sound or allophone of /s/ between vowels in different words. Does not occur after or before a consonant. See Spanish phonology.
Yucateco[36] cuatro años [ˈkwatɾo̞ ˈʔãɲo̞s] 'four years'
Salishan Squamish Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim [sqʷχʷoʔməʃ snit͡ʃim] 'Squamish language'
Philippine Tagalog aaâ [ʔɐʔɐˈʔaʔ] 'to poo' (fut.) See Tagalog phonology.
Polynesian Tahitian puaʻa [puaʔa] 'pig'
Tai-Kadai Thai อา/'ā [ʔaː] 'uncle/aunt' (father's younger sibling)
Polynesian Tongan tuʻu [tuʔu] 'stand'
Samoyedic Tundra Nenets выʼ/vy' [wɨʔ] 'tundra'
Vietic Vietnamese[37] oi [ʔɔj˧] 'sultry' In free variation with no glottal stop. See Vietnamese phonology.
Finnic Võro piniq [ˈpinʲiʔ] 'dogs' "q" is Võro plural marker (maa, kala, "land", "fish"; maaq, kalaq, "lands", "fishes").
Isolate Wagiman jamh [t̠ʲʌmʔ] 'to eat' (perf.)
Omotic Welayta 7írTi [ʔirʈa] 'wet'
Polynesian Wallisian maʻuli [maʔuli] 'life'

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Umeda, Noriko (1978). "Occurrence of Glottal Stops in Fluent Speech". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 64 (1): 88–94. Bibcode:1978ASAJ...64...88U. doi:10.1121/1.381959. PMID 712005.
  2. ^ Catford, J. C. (1990). "Glottal Consonants … Another View". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 20 (2): 25–26. doi:10.1017/S0025100300004229. JSTOR 44526803. S2CID 144421504.
  3. ^ Morrow, Paul (March 16, 2011). "The Basics of Filipino Pronunciation: Part 2 of 3 • Accent Marks". Pilipino Express. Archived from the original on December 27, 2011. Retrieved July 18, 2012.
  4. ^ Nolasco, Ricardo M. D., Grammar Notes on the National Language (PDF).[dead link]
  5. ^ Schoellner, Joan; Heinle, Beverly D., eds. (2007). Tagalog Reading Booklet (PDF). Simon & Schister's Pimsleur. pp. 5–6. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-11-27. Retrieved 2012-07-18.
  6. ^ Proposal to Add Latin Small Letter Glottal Stop to the UCS (PDF), 2005-08-10, archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-09-26, retrieved 2011-10-26.
  7. ^ Browne, Rachel (12 March 2015). "What's in A Name? a Chipewyan's Battle Over Her Native Tongue". Maclean's. Archived from the original on 4 April 2015. Retrieved 5 April 2015.
  8. ^ Graczyk, Randolph (2007). A grammar of Crow = Apsáalooke Aliláau. Bloomington. American Indian Studies Research Institute Indiana University. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-2196-3. OCLC 104894214.
  9. ^ Mastering Hebrew. Barron's. 1988. ISBN 0-8120-3990-4. Archived from the original on 2020-08-01. Retrieved 2016-11-26.
  10. ^ Brown, Gillian (1977). Listening to Spoken English. London: Longman. p. 27.
  11. ^ Kortlandt, Frederik (1993), General Linguistics & Indo-European Reconstruction (PDF), archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-06-08, retrieved 2009-08-23 – via kortlandt.nl.
  12. ^ "That Way They Talk II". 12 March 2012.
  13. ^ Eddington, David; Channer, Caitlin (2010-08-01). "American English Has Goʔ A Loʔ Of Glottal Stops: Social Diffusion and Linguistic Motivation". American Speech. 85 (3): 338–351. doi:10.1215/00031283-2010-019. ISSN 0003-1283.
  14. ^ Jump up to: a b c Lindsey, Geoff (2019). English After RP: Standard British Pronunciation Today. Springer. pp. 89–92. ISBN 978-3-030-04357-5. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  15. ^ Jump up to: a b Katz, William F. (5 September 2013). Phonetics for Dummies. John Wiley & Sons. p. 137. ISBN 978-1-118-50508-3. Retrieved 26 February 2023.
  16. ^ Garellek, Marc. "Glottal stops before word-initial vowels in American English: distribution and acoustic characteristics" (PDF). UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics. 110: 1–23. Retrieved 28 February 2023.
  17. ^ Thelwall (1990:37)
  18. ^ Watson (2002:17)
  19. ^ Dendane, Zoubir (2013). "The Stigmatisation of the Glottal Stop in Tlemcen Speech Community: An Indicator of Dialect Shift". The International Journal of Linguistics and Literature. 2 (3): 1–10. Archived from the original on 2019-01-06.
  20. ^ Gussenhoven (1992:45)
  21. ^ Sivertsen (1960:111)
  22. ^ Roach (2004:240)
  23. ^ Ladefoged (2005:139)
  24. ^ Clark, Yallop & Fletcher (2007:105)
  25. ^ Yager, Joanne; Burtenhult, Niclas (2017). "Jedek: A Newly-Discovered Aslian Variety of Malaysia" (PDF). Linguistic Typology. 21 (3): 493–545. doi:10.1515/lingty-2017-0012. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-002E-7CD2-7. S2CID 126145797. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-08-07. Retrieved 2018-08-07.
  26. ^ Olson et al. (2010:206–207)
  27. ^ Cruz, Aline da (2011). Fonologia e Gramática do Nheengatú: A língua geral falada pelos povos Baré, Warekena e Baniwa [Phonology and Grammar of Nheengatú: The general language spoken by the Baré, Warekena and Baniwa peoples] (PDF) (Doctor thesis) (in Portuguese). Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. ISBN 978-94-6093-063-8. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 7, 2014.
  28. ^ Veloso, João; Martins, Pedro Tiago (2013). O Arquivo Dialetal do CLUP: disponibilização on-line de um corpus dialetal do português. XXVIII Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, Coimbra, APL (in Portuguese). pp. 673–692. ISBN 978-989-97440-2-8. Archived from the original on 2014-03-06.
  29. ^ Phonetic Symbols for Portuguese Phonetic Transcription (PDF), October 2012, archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-11-08 – via users.ox.ac.uk. In European Portuguese, the "é é" interjection usually employs an epenthetic /i/, being pronounced [e̞ˈje̞] instead.
  30. ^ It may be used mostly as a general call of attention for disapproval, disagreement or inconsistency, but also serves as a synonym of the multiuse expression "eu, hein!". (in Portuguese) How to say 'eu, hein' in English – Adir Ferreira Idiomas Archived 2013-07-08 at the Wayback Machine
  31. ^ Blevins (1994:492)
  32. ^ Grimaldi, Lucia; Mensching, Guido, eds. (2004). Su sardu limba de Sardigna et limba de Europa (PDF). Cooperativa Universitaria Editrice Cagliaritana. pp. 110–111. ISBN 88-8467-170-1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-12-05.
  33. ^ Jump up to: a b Landau et al. (1999:67)
  34. ^ Edmondson, J. A.; Esling, J. H.; Harris, J. G., Supraglottal Cavity Shape, Linguistic Register, and Other Phonetic Features of Somali, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.570.821.
  35. ^ Chappell, Whitney, The Hypo-Hyperarticulation Continuum in Nicaraguan Spanish (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-03-07, retrieved 2014-03-07 – via nwav42.pitt.edu.
  36. ^ Michnowicz, Jim; Carpenter, Lindsey, Voiceless Stop Aspiration in Yucatán Spanish: A Sociolinguistic Analysis (PDF), archived (PDF) from the original on 2014-03-07, retrieved 2014-03-07 – via etd.lib.ncsu.edu.
  37. ^ Thompson (1959:458–461)

Bibliography[edit]

External links[edit]

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