About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Glottalization

Encyclopedia : G : GL : GLO : Glottalization

See also Glottalic consonant

Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and voiced consonants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of voiceless consonants usually involves complete closure of the glottis; another way to describe this phenomenon is to say that a glottal stop is made simultaneously with another consonant. In certain cases, the glottal stop can even wholly replace the voiceless consonant.

Different terms are used to describe each phenomenon; here are the most common one, used in the literature dealing with the subject:

Most often, glottalization (wich is the cover term for the two phenomena we raised above) affects the consonnant /t/, but /p/ and /k/ are also more and more affected by it. /tʃ/ (the voiceless palato-alveolar affricate) can also be subject to it (cf. Peter Roach's article in the references given below). In a general way, glottalization can affect only voiceless consonnants such as /p/, /t/ or /k/, not forgetting /tʃ/ for pre-glottalization mainly.

Contents

Phonetic contexts

The glottal stop can appear word-medially or word-finally but never (at least not yet) word-initially. In 1992, Anthea Sullivan published a very interested book entitled Sound Change in Progress in which she studied glottalization and R-insertion. The following lines have been inspired by this book of hers, especially by p. 46 in which she lists the different contexts in which glottalization (pre-glottalization or glottaling) can appear. Let me make a small digresion here by insisting on the fact that the glottal stop is not properly speaking a sound of english, but a kind of allophone of voiceless consonants, more particularly /p/, /t/ and /k/. Besides, it only appears in free variation, which means that, unlike /l/ and its dark allophone, there is no precise rule to determine and anticipate where [ʔ] will appear and where it will not. Only possible contexts, based on research and recordings of native English people, can be enumerated to determine where [ʔ] can appear.

So here are the possible contexts:

Glottalization can appear:

Eg: "bak|ed" [ˡbɛɪʔkt], "hat|s"[ˡhæʔts], "hope|d" [ˡhəʊʔpt]. Eg: "fiction" [ˡfɪʔkʃən], "opera" [ˡɒʔpɹə]. Eg: "city" [ˡsɪʔti] or [ˡsɪʔi], "jacket" [ˡdʒæʔkɪt] or [ˡdʒæʔɪt], "bottle" [ˡbɒʔtəɫ] or [ˡbɒʔəɫ].

N.B. Glottaling in this context is not very common in Received Pronunciation or Estuary English, but is quite frequent in Cockney.

Eg: "bottom" [ˡbɒʔtəm] or [ˡbɒʔəm], "Britain" [ˡbɹɪʔtən] or [ˡbɹɪʔən] Eg: "visitor" [ˡvɪzɪʔə], "seniority" [si:niˡɒɹəʔi].

Glottalization can appear:

Eg: "put them" [ˡpʊʔt ðəm] or [ˡpʊʔ ðəm], "think so" [ˡθɪŋk səʊ] or [ˡθɪŋʔ səʊ], "flip through" [ˡflɪʔp θɹu:] or [ˡflɪʔ θɹu:].

N.B. Interestingly here, for the last example, we are coming to noticing that when a sound is the allophone of different phonemes, here /p/, /t/, and /k/, then there can sometimes be ambiguity if two different words or locutions that are minimal pairs both feature glottaling. Indeed, if one says [ˡflɪʔ θɹu:], how to know whether this person is meaning "flip through" or "flick through"?! The problem here is minor, for these two phrasal verbs are semantically quite close. Now, put the case that the following three words are realized with a glottal stop : "pit", "pip" and "pick"; so [ˡpɪʔ], [ˡpɪʔ] and [ˡpɪʔ]. How then to differentiate between the three realizations?! Fortunately, the semantic context can help! But what is highly interesting to underline here is that "pit", "pip" and "pick" become homophones though they originally were minimal pairs.

Eg: "sort of" [ˡsɔ:ʔt əv] or [ˡsɔ:ʔ əv],"look into" [ˡlʊʔk ɪntʊ] or [ˡlʊʔ ɪntʊ], "keep on" [ˡki:ʔp ɒn] or [ˡki:ʔ ɒn] Eg: "quite -- um..." [ˡkwaɪʔt] or [ˡkwaɪʔ], "what?" [ˡwɒʔt] or [ˡwɒʔ] Eg: "milk|man" [ˡmɪlʔkmæn] or [ˡmɪlʔmæn], "light|weight" [ˡlaɪʔtwɛɪt] or [ˡlaɪʔwɛɪt]. And the last consonant of the last compound word being a voiceless plosive preceding, here, nothing, one could even say [ˡlaɪʔtwɛɪʔt] or [ˡlaɪʔwɛɪʔ] or even, why not, with a mix of pre-glottalization and glottaling: [ˡlaɪʔtwɛɪʔ] or [ˡlaɪʔwɛɪʔt].

Ejectives and implosives

Ejectives and implosives are sometimes thought of as kinds of glottalized consonants. However, they involve a very different airstream mechanism than the pulmonic egressive sounds discussed here.

In English, voiceless stops are frequently glottalized at the ends of words:

While glottalization is phonemic in some languages, in English it is strictly allophonic, meaning it behaves as a variation of another sound.

There are two other ways to represent glottalization in the IPA: (a) the same way as ejectives, with an apostrophe; or (b) with the under-tilde for creaky voice. For example, the Yapese word for sick with a glottalized m could be transcribed as either [m’aar] or [m̰aar]. (In some typefaces, the apostrophe will occur above the em.)

References

Glottalization

English accents

Internet Links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: