"di?nt" (with glottal stop)

[Alice Faber]

--On Sunday, November 14, 2004 10:57 PM -0500 "Mark A. Mandel"
<mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU> wrote:

> A question from a friend in Boston:
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
> I was on the Green Line, and there were a couple of African-American
> teenage girls talking loudly to one another (they were about twenty feet
> away, almost out of sight, but I could hear every word they said).
>
> And it occurred to me as I was listening that there's a linguistic
> artifact that I've only heard from urban African-Americans my age or
> younger, mostly girls.  It's a sort of glottal stop used in place of t or
> d; eg. di-unt instead of didn't.  Do you know where this might have come
> from?
>
> =====================
>
> -- Mark
> [This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]

I've heard this often from callers to NY sports talk radio who have no
overt AAVE phonology (other than this, if it *is* AAVE).

--
Alice Faber
afaber at panix.com