glottal stops
Jules Levin
ameliede at EARTHLINK.NET
Sun Apr 22 21:35:16 UTC 2007
At 12:20 PM 4/22/2007, you wrote:
>What I meant by saying that a glottal stop is pure silence is that
>the stop itself (the closure phase) is silent (by definition). What
>we hear -- and this is obviously more true for oral plosives -- is
>the transitions to and from the stop. Based on those transitions, we
>subconsciously calculate how the silence must have been accomplished
>-- in other words, the point of articulation.
This is accurate linguistically, but not acoustically. Just as one
can hear the click of fingernails on ivory, or ivory on wood when a
piano is being played, if one is close enough, the articulations that
make up voiceless stops do produce sound in the oral cavity that can
in principle be heard, especially by the speaker, if attention is
paid. It certainly can be recorded. Of course, the sound produced
has no, and can have no linguistic (communicative) function.
Jules Levin
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
options, and more. Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the SEELANG
mailing list