"di?nt" (with glottal stop)

[Wilson Gray]

        From:     wilson.gray at rcn.com
        Subject:        Re: "di?nt" (with glottal stop)
        Date:   November 17, 2004 12:35:12 PM EST
        To:       bgzimmer at rci.rutgers.edu


On Nov 17, 2004, at 12:45 AM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "di?nt" (with glottal stop)
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> --------
>
> On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 23:39:19 -0500, Laurence Horn
> <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> wrote:
>
>> It's been suggested (by Bolinger, and more recently me in a Linguist
>> List thread a few years ago) that it's not an accident that medial
>> glottal stops occur in both "uh-oh" and "unh-unh", where the latter
>> rendering is intended to represent the open-mouth version of the
>> disagreement marker (the counterpart of the agreement/assent marker
>> "uh-huh", which crucially has no medial [?]).  The closed-mouth
>> version of the disagreement/denial/rejection marker, which I won't
>> even try to represent, also contains a medial glottal stop, and (like
>> uh-oh and unh-unh) high tone-low tone.  The generalization seems to
>> be that medial intervocalic [?] (not, of course, the [?] showing up
>> before initial vowels) is associated with negation, especially in
>> conjunction with the high/low tone sequence.  (Note that the open-
>> and closed-mouth affirmative/assent markers, uh-huh and m-hm, both
>> have low-high tone sequences as well as medial voiceless vowel (i.e.
>> [h]) or voiceless nasal in place of [?].)  (Arguably, although this
>> is even more speculative, it could be claimed that both the [?] and
>> the high-low sequence are partially iconic representations of the
>> semantic effect of negation.)   Now "didn't" is pretty negative too,
>> which may (I did say this was speculative) have motivated speakers to
>> assimilate it to the pattern of those voiceless "kitten" words that
>> have the medial [?], even though the voiced [d] means it "should"
>> (ceteris paribus) pattern with words like "hidden" and "wooden",
>> which as Arnold and I have noted don't transform to -[?In] in the
>> same way.
>>
>> Any buyers?
>
> Sure, I'll buy it, especially since the stereotypical purveyor of "oh
> no
> you/he/she [dI?In]" might very well accompany the catchphrase with
> other
> medial-glottal forms like "uh-uh", "nuh-uh"

"Nuh-uh"?! Oh, no you didn't!

-Wilson Gray

> , and "mm-mm" to underscore the
> speaker's astonishment/outrage towards a provocative statement.
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>