Glottal stop
The
glottal stop or
voiceless glottal plosive is a type of
consonantal sound, used in many
spoken languages. The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The glottal stop is the sound made when the
vocal cords are pressed together to stop the flow of air and then released, and is the sound in the middle of the
interjection uh-oh.
Features of the glottal stop:
* Its
manner of articulation is
plosive or stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.
* Its
place of articulation is
glottal which means it is articulated by the
vocal folds.
* Its
phonation type is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
* It is an
oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
* Because it is pronounced in the throat; without a component in the mouth, the
central/
lateral dichotomy does not apply.
* The
airstream mechanism is
pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the
lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the
glottis or the mouth.
There are few words in
English that universally contain a glottal stop. The best known examples are the interjections "uh-oh" (sometimes spelled "oh-oh") and "uh-uh". The
p in "yep" and "nope" for
yes and
no may have originally represented glottal stops, but the words are now typically read with a [p].
However, in many varieties of English, glottal stop is an
allophone of /t/ in final position, as in
habit or
pat. In such accents as
Cockney and
Estuary English, the glottal stop is also an allophone of /t/ in medial position as well, as in
bottle, water, and
fatter. In East Anglian varieties, glottal-stop realisations of /t/ can be found in word-
initial position, if the /t/ is in an unstressed syllable (so is often found in the words
to,
today,
tomorrow)
and is not in tone group"initial position. So, in "I'm going to town tomorrow", the /t/ in
to and
tomorrow is readily realised as a glottal stop. In other dialects, a /t/ followed by a syllabic /n/ is often replaced by a glottal stop, as for example in
button or
fatten. (This may be obscured if the speaker consciously articulates consonants for clarity.)
Glottal stop may be an allophone of /k/: at the ends of words (for example, in the discourse marker
like); medially (for example, [] in
Michael Palin's "You lu
cky bastard!" in
Monty Python's Life of Brian); and at the beginnings of words that follow words ending in vowel sounds (for example, "You
can open the door now").
In many
Yorkshire accents, a glottalized /t/ is used as a replacement of the word "the", as shown in the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition sketch by Monty Python, in which
Graham Chapman states "There's trouble at t' mill!", and as when John Cleese exclaims "I'm going down t'market."
Glottal stops are also found in some forms of
African-American Vernacular English: for example, the
t in
satin.
Finally, English acquires, usually from languages in which the glottal stop is a phoneme,
loanwords in which glottal stops are part of the foreign pronunciation. For example, the
Hawaiian word
‘a‘ā is used by geologists to specify lava that is relatively thick, chunky, and rough. The Hawaiian spelling indicates the two glottal stops in the word; but the most widely used English spelling,
aa, does not (Pukui and Elbert 1986:2, 389). Loans often retain aspects of their foreign pronunciation until they become fully nativized in the adoptive language.
In many languages, the glottal stop is a full
phoneme. In languages using the
Latin alphabet, it is often written as an opening single quote
‘, as in
Hawaiian. Other languages, such as
Danish, have the glottal stop as a
suprasegmental feature.
Arabic
In
Arabic, the glottal stop is a full phoneme, represented by the letter
ء (
hamza).
Burmese
In
Burmese, all finals (represented with a -
္), except for nasalised finals, are glottal stops. A glottal stop can occur in the initial and final position, but is not a full phoneme.
Czech
The use of the glottal stop is similar as in
German. It is inserted between two adjacent
vowels which do not form a
diphthong (
používat , to use), or preceeds a vowel for emphasising a boundary between words or parts of a word, e.g.
trojúhelník (triangle),
z okna (out of the window). But in some
Moravian and
Silesian
dialects the glottal stop is usually omitted: , . It is never used in words of foreign origin (e.g.
koala).
Danish
In
Danish, the glottal stop is used the same way as Swedish and Norwegian tones, to mark that a word has another meaning. The word
hjælper means 'helps', but without the glottal stop it means 'helper'.
Dutch
In
Dutch, the glottal stop is not phonemic, but it is inserted in multi-
morphemic words before morphemes that begin with a vowel, for example
beamen ("to endorse"), where the glottal stop may be inserted after the
prefix "be-". Normal words starting with a vowel also may receive a glottal in front if they are pronounced with emphasis, as in German.
An exception where the presence or not of the glottal would change the meaning of a word is
koop ("buy") versus
coöp ("cooperative"). In such cases the
trema is used to indicate the break.
The Dutch dialects
West Flemish and
Zeelandic however, make frequent use of glottal stops. In many words, the
k may be replaced by a glottal stop. This also sometimes occurs for
t or
p sounds.
Finnish
In
Finnish, the glottal stop may occur in word-initial, central or final position. In central position it can be found as a result of lenition of /k/ and is written with an apostrophe (genitive of
vaaka:
vaa'an ). Some words (mainly substantives ending in
-e and imperative forms) end with a glottal stop, which is not written and is omitted by many speakers. However it tends to assimilate with the initial consonant of the following word, pronounced as a doubled consonant; for example vaate + kauppa becomes vaatekauppa . In initial position the glottal stop may be used to separate vowels of different words; for example,
anna omena ,
linja-auto . In spelling, it may be indicated by a space (separate words), or a hyphen (identical vowels adjacent in compound words), or with no notation at all. Short, stressed vowels may trigger the introduction of a glottal stop; arguably, there is a minimal pair for the word
tienesteillä between "with road blockages" and "with earnings". In casual speech, however, the glottal stop is not used much, and all these cases may equally well be rendered with different degrees and placements of
stress.
The colloquial
spoken Finnish exhibits a completely different phenomenon, where the
syncope of word-final /n/ actually produces a hiatus or a glottal stop. This makes the glottal stop a regular
genitive case marker in e.g. the
Savo dialect. For example, standard
se on ollut "it has been" is rendered as
se o ollu . More often than not, this glottal stop is immediately assimilated to the following consonant as per regular
sandhi, e.g. standard
se on minun "it is mine" to
se o mu .
French
In
French, the glottal stop is used for certain words beginning with an h. These words have a "h aspiré", which means they break the usual
liaison with the word before them. The absence of liaison is often emphasized by a glottal stop, especially when one articulates. For instance,
les hommes (the men) is pronounced with a liaison, but
les hérissons (the hedgehogs) is pronounced with a "h aspiré" (no liaison) which may be emphasized as with a glottal stop.
German
In northern and central
German, initial vowels are generally preceded by a glottal stop, for instance
die Angst ‘the anguish',
acht ‘eight'. This glottal stop is pronounced as well if there is a
prefix before the initial vowel, for instance
Beamter ‘civil servant' ←
Amt ‘civil service', or in
compounds, for instance
Spiegelei ‘fried egg' ←
Spiegel ‘mirror' +
Ei ‘egg'. The general insertion of a glottal stop before an initial vowel is a common mistake Germans make when pronouncing foreign languages like English or French.
In addition glottal stops are sometimes inserted between every two adjacent vowels that do not form a diphthong, for example
Ruine ‘ruin' (noun), or
Oase ‘oasis'.
The Southern varieties of standard German often have no glottal stop at all. Several German dialects, especially in the South, don't have glottal stops.
Guaraní
In
Guaraní, the glottal stop is a full consonant. It is denoted by the letter
', called
puso (see Guaraní alphabet). Compare
kua "hole" with
ku'a "waist".
Hebrew
In
Hebrew, the glottal stop is a full phoneme. It is denoted by the letter
Aleph (א).
Maltese
In
Maltese, the glottal stop is a full phoneme. It is denoted by the letter
q.
Micronesian
In
Palauan the glottal stop is denoted by the letters 'ch'.
Norwegian
It is used in some dialects.
Polynesian
Many
Polynesian languages, though not all, feature the glottal stop as a full phoneme. If it is denoted, an
apostrophe or similar character is used. The modifier letter turned comma, , is often deemed proper in academic circles. It is called
‘okina in
Hawaiian,
fakaua in
Tongan, eta in
Tahitian and so on. Very often, however, Tongan excepted, it is ignored. Although some English speakers pronounce glottal stops in Hawaiian words, the vast majority do not. Even in the name
Hawai‘i, it is most often omitted.
Võro
In
Võro, the glottal stop is a full phoneme. It is denoted by the letter
q and is often the only differentiator of meaning in the Nominative plural, e.g. singular
kala, pini, maa 'fish, dog, land', plural
kalaq, piniq, maaq 'fishes, dogs, lands'. is also marker of imperative, e.g.
annaq, mineq 'give, go'. At the same time it is obvious that the q phoneme in Võro is not a completely usual phoneme as regards its specific conditions of occurrence: (a) q occurs only word-finally after a vowel or a voiced consonant; (b) q does not palatalize; (c) there is no length opposition in the pronunciation of q. As a rule, the Võro glottal stop acts mostly as a grammatical marker rather than a differentiator of lexical meaning. The fact that the glottal stop does not change the main meaning of the word is evidenced by its (variable) occurrence in forms where it is historically secondary, and mainly concentrates the form in the information structure of the sentence, e.g. pronouns
maq, saq 'I, you' ; particles
noq, külq 'now, yes'. Particularly productive is the usage of particles containing .
Other
Other examples of languages using a phonemic glottal stop are
Nahuatl (and many other
Native American languages) and the constructed
Klingon language from the TV series
Star Trek.
*
Gemination*
Stød*
List of phonetics topics
