Glottal stop
| Glottal stop | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| ʔ | |||
| IPA Number | 113 | ||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | ʔ | ||
| Unicode (hex) | U+0294 | ||
| X-SAMPA | ? | ||
| Braille |  | ||
| |||
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The glottal stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʔ⟩. Using IPA, this sound is known as a glottal plosive.
In English, the glottal stop occurs as an open juncture (for example, between the vowel sounds in uh-oh!, in "grade A" as opposed to "gray day",[1]) and in T-glottalization. For most US English speakers, a glottal stop is used as an allophone of /t/ between a vowel and "m" (as in atmosphere or Batman) or a syllabic "n" (as in button or mountain) except in slow speech.[citation needed] In British English, the glottal stop is most familiar in the Cockney pronunciation of "butter" as "bu'er".
Features
Features of the glottal stop:
- Its manner of articulation is occlusive, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. Since the consonant is also oral, with no nasal outlet, the airflow is blocked entirely, and the consonant is a plosive.
- Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibration of the vocal cords; necessarily so, because the vocal cords are held tightly together, preventing vibration.
- It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
- Because the sound is not produced with airflow over the tongue, the central–lateral dichotomy does not apply.
- Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.
Phonology and symbolization of the glottal stop in selected languages
Although this segment is not a written[2] phoneme in English, it is present phonetically in nearly all dialects of English as an allophone of /t/ in the syllable coda. Speakers of Cockney, Scottish English and several other British dialects also pronounce an intervocalic /t/ between vowels as in city. In Received Pronunciation, a glottal stop is inserted before a tautosyllabic voiceless stop, e.g. sto’p, tha’t, kno’ck, wa’tch, also lea’p, soa’k, hel’p, pin’ch.[3]
In many languages that do not allow a sequence of vowels, such as Persian, the glottal stop may be used to break up such a hiatus. There are intricate interactions between falling tone and the glottal stop in the histories of such languages as Danish (cf. stød), Chinese and Thai.[citation needed]
In many languages, the unstressed intervocalic allophone of the glottal stop is a creaky-voiced glottal approximant. These are only known to be contrastive in one language, Gimi, where it is the voiced equivalent of the stop.
Writing
In the traditional Romanization of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with an apostrophe, ⟨’⟩, and this is the source of the IPA character ⟨ʔ⟩. In many Polynesian languages that use the Latin alphabet, however, the glottal stop is written with a reversed apostrophe, ⟨‘⟩ (called ‘okina in Hawaiian and Samoan), which, confusingly, is also used to transcribe the Arabic ayin and is the source of the IPA character for the voiced pharyngeal fricative ⟨ʕ⟩. In Malay the glottal stop is represented by the letter ⟨k⟩, in Võro and Maltese by ⟨q⟩.
Other scripts also have letters used for representing the glottal stop, such as the Hebrew letter aleph ⟨א⟩, and the Cyrillic letter palochka ⟨Ӏ⟩ used in several Caucasian languages. In Tundra Nenets it is represented by the letters apostrophe ⟨ʼ⟩ and double apostrophe ⟨ˮ⟩. In Japanese, glottal stops occur at the end of interjections of surprise or anger, and are represented by the character ⟨っ⟩.
In the graphic representation of most Philippine languages, the glottal stop has no consistent symbolization. In most cases, however, a word that begins with a vowel-letter (e.g. Tagalog aso, "dog") is always pronounced with an unrepresented glottal stop before that vowel (as also in Modern German and Hausa). Some orthographies employ a hyphen, instead of the reverse apostrophe, if the glottal stop occurs in the middle of the word (e.g. Tagalog pag-ibig, "love"; or Visayan gabi-i, "night"). When it occurs in the end of a Tagalog word, the last vowel is written with a circumflex accent (known as the pakupyâ), if both a stress and a glottal stop occurs at the final vowel (e.g. basâ, "wet"); or a grave accent (known as the paiwà), if the glottal stop occurs at the final vowel, but the stress occurs at the penultimate syllable (e.g. batà, "child").[4][5][6]
Some Canadian indigenous languages have adopted the phonetic symbol "ʔ" itself as part of their orthographies. In some of them, it occurs as a pair of uppercase and lowercase characters, Ɂ and ɂ.[7] Sometimes the number symbol 7 is used if the ʔ character is not available to the typesetter, and in some cases such as in the Squamish language, the 7 has become the preferred symbol.
In 2015, two women in the Northwest Territories challenged the territorial government over its refusal to permit them to use the ʔ character in their daughters' names: Sahaiʔa, a Chipewyan name, and Sakaeʔah, a Slavey name (the two names are actually cognates). The territory argued that territorial and federal identity documents were unable to accommodate the character. The women registered the names with hyphens instead of the ʔ, while continuing to challenge the policy.[8]
Use of the glottal stop is a distinct characteristic of the Southern Mainland Argyll dialects of Scottish Gaelic. In such a dialect, the standard Gaelic phrase Tha Gàidhlig agam (I speak Gaelic), would be rendered Tha Gàidhlig a'am.[citation needed]
Occurrence
This table demonstrates how widely the sound of glottal stop is found among the world's spoken languages. It is not intended to be a complete list. Any of these languages may have varieties not represented in the table.
| Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abkhaz | аи | [ʔaj] | 'no' | See Abkhaz phonology. | |
| Adyghe | Iэ | [ʔa] | 'arm/hand' | ||
| Arabic | Standard[9] | أغاني | [ʔaˈɣaːniː] | 'songs' | See Arabic phonology, Hamza. |
| Metropolitan[10] | شقة | [ˈʃæʔʔæ] | 'apartment' | Metropolitan dialects including Egyptian Arabic.[10] Corresponds to /q/ in Literary Arabic. | |
| Assyrian Neo-Aramaic | [ܣܥܬ] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [sʔɐt] | 'clock/watch' | ||
| Bikol | [ba-go] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈbaːʔɡo] | 'new' | ||
| Burmese | [[[Burmese script|မြစ်များ]]] Error: {{Lang}}: script: mymr not supported for code: my (help) | [mjiʔ mjà] | 'rivers' | ||
| Cebuano | [tubò] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈtuboʔ] | 'to grow' | ||
| Chamorro | [halu'u] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [həluʔu] | 'shark' | ||
| Chechen | кхоъ / [qo'] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [qoʔ] | 'three' | ||
| Chinese | Cantonese | [[[Chinese characters|愛]]] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language tag: zh-yue-Hani (help)/[oi3] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ʔɔːi˧] | 'love' | See Cantonese phonology. |
| Wu | [[[Chinese characters|一级了]]] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language tag: zh-wuu-Hani (help) | [ʔiɪʔ.tɕiɪʔ.ʔləʔ] | 'superb' | ||
| Czech | [používat] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [poʔuʒiːvat] | 'to use' | See Czech phonology. | |
| Danish | [[[Danish alphabet|hånd]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈhɒ̜̽nʔ] | 'hand' | One of the possible realizations of stød. Depending on the dialect and style of speech, it can be instead realized as laryngealisation of the preceding sound. See Danish phonology. | |
| Dutch[11] | [beamen] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [bəʔˈaːmə(n)] | 'to confirm' | See Dutch phonology. | |
| English | Received Pronunciation | [[[English orthography|uh-oh]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈɐʔəʊ] | 'uh-oh' | |
| American | [ˈʌʔoʊ] | ||||
| Australian | [[[English orthography|cat]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [kʰæʔ(t)] | 'cat' | Allophone of /t/. See glottalization and English phonology. | |
| GA | |||||
| Estuary | [kʰæʔ] | ||||
| Cockney[12] | [kʰɛ̝ʔ] | ||||
| RP[13] and GA | button | 'button' | |||
| Esperanto | [scii] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈst͡si.ʔi] | 'to know' | See Esperanto phonology. | |
| Finnish | [linja-auto] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈlinjɑʔˌɑuto] | 'bus' | See Finnish phonology. | |
| German | Northern | [Beamter] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [bəˈʔamtɐ] | 'civil servant' | See German phonology. |
| Guaraní | [avañe’ẽ] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ãʋ̃ãɲẽˈʔẽ] | 'Guaraní' | Occurs only between vowels. | |
| Hawaiian[14] | [[[Hawaiian alphabet|ʻeleʻele]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈʔɛlɛˈʔɛlɛ] | 'black' | See Hawaiian phonology. | |
| Hebrew | מאמר | [maʔămaʁ] | 'article' | See Modern Hebrew phonology. | |
| Icelandic | [[[Icelandic orthography|en]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ʔɛn] | 'but' | Only used according to emphasis, never occurring in minimal pairs. | |
| Iloko | [nalab-ay] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [nalabˈʔaj] | 'bland tasting' | Hyphen when occurring within the word. | |
| Indonesian | [bakso] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˌbäʔˈso] | 'meatball' | Allophone of /k/ or /ɡ/ in the syllable coda. | |
| Japanese | Kagoshima | 柿 | [kaʔ] | 'persimmon' | |
| Javanese[15] | [anak] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [änäʔ] | 'child' | Allophone of /k/ in morpheme-final position. | |
| Kabardian | Iэ | [ʔa] | 'arm/hand' | ||
| Kagayanen[16] | ? | [saˈʔaɡ] | 'floor' | ||
| Khasi | [lyoh] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [lʔɔːʔ] | 'cloud' | ||
| Korean | 일 | [ʔil] | 'one' | In free variation with no glottal stop. Occurs only in initial position of word. | |
| Malay | [[[Malay alphabet|tidak]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈtidäʔ] | 'no' | Allophone of final /k/ in the syllable coda, pronounced before consonants or at end of word. | |
| Maltese | [[[Maltese alphabet|qattus]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈʔattus] | 'cat' | ||
| Māori | Cook Island | [taʻi] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [taʔi] | 'one' | |
| Nahuatl | [tahtli] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [taʔtɬi] | 'father' | Often left unwritten. | |
| Nez Perce | [[[Americanist phonetic notation|yáakaʔ]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈjaːkaʔ] | 'black bear' | ||
| Nheengatu[17] | [ai] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [aˈʔi] | 'sloth' | Transcription (or absence thereof) varies. | |
| Okinawan | 音 | [ʔutu] | 'sound' | ||
| Persian | معنی | [maʔni] | 'meaning' | See Persian phonology. | |
| Pirahã | [baíxi] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈmàí̯ʔì] | 'parent' | ||
| Portuguese[18] | Vernacular Brazilian | [ê-ê] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)[19] | [ˌʔe̞ˈʔeː] | 'yeah right'[20] | Marginal sound. Does not occur after or before a consonant. In Brazilian casual speech, there is at least one [ʔ]–vowel length–pitch accent minimal pair (triply unusual, the ideophones short [ih] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) vs. long [ih] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)). See Portuguese phonology. |
| Some speakers | [à aula] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈa ˈʔawlɐ] | 'to the class' | ||
| Rotuman[21] | ʻusu | [ʔusu] | 'to box' | ||
| Samoan | [maʻi] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [maʔi] | 'sickness/illness' | ||
| Sardinian [citation needed] |
Some dialects of Barbagia | [luna] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [luʔa] | 'moon' | Intervocalic allophone of /n, k, l/.[citation needed] |
| Some dialects of Sarrabus | |||||
| Serbo-Croatian[22] | и онда / [[[Gaj's Latin alphabet|i onda]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [iː ʔô̞n̪d̪a̠] | 'and then' | Optionally inserted between vowels across word boundaries.[22] See Serbo-Croatian phonology | |
| Seri | [[[Seri alphabet|he]]] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ʔɛ] | 'I' | ||
| Spanish | Nicaraguan[23] | [más alto] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈma ˈʔal̻t̻o̞] | 'higher' | Marginal sound or allophone of /s/ between vowels in different words. Does not occur after or before a consonant. See Spanish phonology. |
| Yucateco[24] | [cuatro años] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ˈkwatɾo̞ ˈʔãɲo̞s] | 'four years' | ||
| Tagalog | [oo] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [oʔo] | 'yes' | See Tagalog phonology. | |
| Tahitian | pua'a | [puaʔa] | 'pig' | ||
| Thai | อา | [ʔaː] | 'uncle/aunt' (father's younger sibling) | ||
| Tongan | tuʻu | [tuʔu] | 'stand' | ||
| Tundra Nenets | выʼ | [wɨʔ] | 'tundra' | ||
| Vietnamese[25] | [oi] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) | [ʔɔj˧] | 'sultry' | In free variation with no glottal stop. See Vietnamese phonology. | |
| Võro | piniq | [ˈpinʲiʔ] | 'dogs' | "q" is Võro plural marker (maa, kala, "land", "fish"; maaq, kalaq, "lands", "fishes"). | |
| Wagiman | jamh | [t̠ʲʌmʔ] | 'to eat' (perf.) | ||
| Welayta | [ʔirʈa] | 'wet' | |||
| Wallisian | ma'uli | [maʔuli] | 'life' | ||
See also
References
- ^ Mastering Hebrew, 1988, ISBN 0812039904, p. xxviii
- ^ Kortlandt, Frederik (1993). "General Linguistics & Indo-European Reconstruction" (PDF).
- ^ Brown, Gillian. 1977:27. Listening to spoken English. London: Longman.
- ^ Paul Morrow (March 16, 2011). "The basics of Filipino pronunciation: Part 2 of 3 • accent marks". Pilipino Express. Retrieved July 18, 2012.
- ^ Ricardo M.D. Nolasco. Grammar notes on the national language (PDF).
- ^ Joan Schoellner & Beverly D. Heinle, ed. (2007). Tagalog Reading Booklet (PDF). Simon & Schister's Pimsleur. pp. 5–6.
- ^ "Proposal to add LATIN SMALL LETTER GLOTTAL STOP to the UCS" (PDF). 2005-08-10. Retrieved 2011-10-26.
- ^ Browne, Rachel (12 March 2015). "What's in a name? A Chipewyan's battle over her native tongue". Maclean's. Retrieved 5 April 2015.
- ^ Thelwall (1990:37)
- ^ a b Watson (2002:17)
- ^ Gussenhoven (1992:45)
- ^ Sivertsen (1960:111)
- ^ Roach (2004:240)
- ^ Ladefoged (2005:139)
- ^ Clark, Yallop & Fletcher (2007:105)
- ^ Olson et al. (2010:206–207)
- ^ Fonologia e Gramática do Nheengatu – A língua geral falada pelos povos Baré, Warekena e Baniwa Template:Pt icon
- ^ João Veloso & Pedro Tiago Martins (2013). O Arquivo Dialetal do CLUP: disponibilização on-line de um corpus dialetal do português Template:Pt icon
- ^ Phonetic symbols for Portuguese phonetic transcription In European Portuguese, the "é é" interjection usually employs an epenthetic /i/, being pronounced [e̞ˈje̞] instead.
- ^ It may be used mostly as a general call of attention for disapproval, disagreement or inconsistency, but also serves as a synonym of the multiuse expression "eu, hein!". Template:Pt icon How to say 'eu, hein' in English – Adir Ferreira Idiomas
- ^ Blevins (1994:492)
- ^ a b Landau et al. (1999:67)
- ^ The hypo-hyperarticulation continuum in Nicaraguan Spanish
- ^ Voiceless stop aspiration in Yucatán Spanish: a sociolinguistic analysis
- ^ Thompson (1959:458–461)
Bibliography
- Blevins, Juliette (1994), "The Bimoraic Foot in Rotuman Phonology and Morphology", Oceanic Linguistics, 33 (2): 491–516, doi:10.2307/3623138, JSTOR 3623138
- Clark, John Ellery; Yallop, Colin; Fletcher, Janet (2007), An introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, Wiley-Blackwell
- Gussenhoven, Carlos (1992), "Dutch", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 22 (2): 45–47, doi:10.1017/S002510030000459X
- Ladefoged, Peter (2005), Vowels and Consonants (Second ed.), Blackwell, ISBN 0-631-21411-9
- Landau, Ernestina; Lončarić, Mijo; Horga, Damir; Škarić, Ivo (1999), "Croatian", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 66–69, ISBN 0-521-65236-7
- Olson, Kenneth; Mielke, Jeff; Sanicas-Daguman, Josephine; Pebley, Carol Jean; Paterson, Hugh J., III (2010), "The phonetic status of the (inter)dental approximant", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 40 (2): 199–215, doi:10.1017/S0025100309990296
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - Roach, Peter (2004), "British English: Received Pronunciation", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34 (2): 239–245, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001768
- Schane, Sanford A (1968), French Phonology and Morphology, Boston, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, ISBN 0-262-19040-0
- Sivertsen, Eva (1960), Cockney Phonology, Oslo: University of Oslo
- Thelwall, Robin (1990), "Illustrations of the IPA: Arabic", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 20 (2): 37–41, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004266
- Thompson, Laurence (1959), "Saigon phonemics", Language, 35 (3): 454–476, doi:10.2307/411232, JSTOR 411232
- Watson, Janet (2002), The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-824137-2
