glottal stops
Loren A. Billings
billings at NCNU.EDU.TW
Sun Apr 22 19:03:04 UTC 2007
I would like to quibble with a thing or two that Charles Mill wrote:
> Dear Paul,
>
> This is in reply to your query about glottal stops. (For some reasons
> my posts to SEELANGS get bounced back.) You say "A glo'al stop
> alone is pure silence, so it cannot be a syllable." Then ask "Do you
> mean that the syllable /ends/ with a glo'al stop? Or /begins/ with one?"
>
> Someone else may say this, and I'm not sure if it's germaine to you
> post, but a glottal stop isn't silent.
Any unvoiced stop is technically silent. However, it is phonologically
significant, as Mills continues below, in that it interrupts a stream of sounds
(i.e., nonsilent) material.
> Like any other phonetic segment, it has a physiological gesture and
> duration, and like all stops, it makes a sound. If your pronunciation is
> like mine, think of the unguarded American pronunciation of the word
> "button". /t/ and /n/ are both made at the same point of articulation
> (the alveolar ridge), but /t/ is a stop, while /n/ is a continant.
At least in one theoretical framework, /n/ is not a continuant. In that
framework it is still a stop, but not a plosive. The requirement for a sound to
be [+continuant] is continuous flow of air over the tongue within the oral
cavity. Both [n] and [t] are [-continuant] because there is complete blockage
of the air over the top of the tongue.
> You know how to make a /t/, but listen carefully tohow the /t/ in this
> word is released! The release is not at the alveolar ridge, but at the
> glottis! In other words, you're hearing a glottal stop. But you're right,
> stops in general don't form syllabic peaks, rather, they are found in the
> onset or coda.
>
> More detail than you asked for, I know, but inquiring minds want to
> know! :-)
>
> Charles Mills
> Assistant Professor of Russian
> Knox College
--
Loren A. Billings, Ph.D.
Associate professor of linguistics
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Chi Nan University
Puli, Nantou County 545 Taiwan
--==Mailed via NCNU E-Mail==--
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