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The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...
al sound used in many spoken
language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
s, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the
glottis The glottis (: glottises or glottides) is the opening between the vocal folds (the rima glottidis). The glottis is crucial in producing sound from the vocal folds. Etymology From Ancient Greek ''γλωττίς'' (glōttís), derived from ''γ ...
. The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
that represents this sound is . As a result of the obstruction of the airflow in the glottis, the glottal vibration either stops or becomes irregular with a low rate and sudden drop in intensity.


Features

Features of the glottal stop: * It has no
phonation The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defi ...
at all, as there is no airflow through the glottis. It is voiceless, however, in the sense that it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.


Writing

In the traditional
romanization In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...
of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with the
apostrophe The apostrophe (, ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one o ...
or the symbol , which is the source of the IPA character . In many Polynesian languages that use the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...
, however, the glottal stop is written with a rotated apostrophe, (called '' ʻokina'' in Hawaiian and Samoan), which is commonly used to transcribe the Arabic ayin as well (also ) and is the source of the IPA character for the voiced pharyngeal fricative . In Malay the glottal stop is represented by the letter (at the end of words), in Võro and Maltese by . Another way of writing the glottal stop is the saltillo , used in languages such as Tlapanec and Rapa Nui. Other scripts also have letters used for representing the glottal stop, such as the Hebrew letter
aleph Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician ''ʾālep'' 𐤀, Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew ''ʾālef'' , Aramaic alphabet, Aramaic ''ʾālap'' � ...
and the
Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...
letter
palochka The palochka () is a letter in the Cyrillic script. The letter is usually caseless. It was introduced in the late 1930s as the Hindu-Arabic digit ' 1', and on Cyrillic keyboards, it is usually typeset as the Roman numeral ''. Unicode currentl ...
, used in several Caucasian languages. The
Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic (Arabic alphabet) and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script), the second-most widel ...
uses
hamza The hamza ( ') () is an Arabic script character that, in the Arabic alphabet, denotes a glottal stop and, in non-Arabic languages, indicates a diphthong, vowel, or other features, depending on the language. Derived from the letter '' ʿayn'' ( ...
, which can appear both as a
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
and as an independent letter (though not part of the alphabet). In Tundra Nenets, it is represented by the letters
apostrophe The apostrophe (, ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one o ...
and double apostrophe . In Japanese, glottal stops occur at the end of interjections of surprise or anger and are represented by the character . In the graphic representation of most
Philippine languages The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw (language ...
, the glottal stop has no consistent symbolization. In most cases, however, a word that begins with a vowel-letter (e.g. Tagalog , "dog") is always pronounced with an unrepresented glottal stop before that vowel (as in Modern German and Hausa). Some orthographies use a hyphen instead of the reverse apostrophe if the glottal stop occurs in the middle of the word (e.g. Tagalog , "love"; or Visayan , "night"). If it occurs in the end of a word, the last vowel can be written with a circumflex accent (known as the ''pakupyâ'') if both a stress and a glottal stop occur in the final vowel (e.g. ''basâ'', "wet") or a
grave accent The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and many other Western European languages as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other ...
(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"). Some Canadian indigenous languages, especially some of the
Salishan languages The Salishan languages ( ), also known as the Salish languages ( ), are a Language family, family of languages found in the Pacific Northwest in North America, namely the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washingt ...
, have adopted the IPA letter into their orthographies. In some of them, it occurs as a casing pair, and . The digit or a
question mark The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation, punctuation mark that indicates a question or interrogative clause or phrase in many languages. History The history of the question mark is ...
is sometimes substituted for , and is preferred in languages such as Squamish. SENĆOŦENwhose alphabet is mostly unique from other Salish languagescontrastly uses the
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical; others give it the appearance of a miniature fille ...
to represent the glottal stop, though it is optional. In 2015, two women in the
Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories is a federal Provinces and territories of Canada, territory of Canada. At a land area of approximately and a 2021 census population of 41,070, it is the second-largest and the most populous of Provinces and territorie ...
challenged the territorial government over its refusal to permit them to use the letter in their daughters' names: ''Sahaiʔa'', a Chipewyan name, and ''Sakaeʔah'', a Slavey name (the two names are actually
cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...
s). 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 , while continuing to challenge the policy. In the
Crow language Crow (endonym, native name: or ) is a Missouri River Valley, Missouri Valley Siouan languages, Siouan language spoken primarily by the Crow Tribe in present-day southeastern Montana. The word translates to "Children of the Large Beaked Bird" ...
, the glottal stop is written as a
question mark The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation, punctuation mark that indicates a question or interrogative clause or phrase in many languages. History The history of the question mark is ...
. The only instance of the glottal stop in Crow is as a question marker morpheme at the end of a sentence. Use of the glottal stop is a distinct characteristic of the Southern Mainland Argyll dialects of
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...
. In such a dialect, the standard Gaelic phrase ("I speak Gaelic"), would be rendered . In the Nawdm language of Ghana, the glottal stop is written ''ɦ'', capital ''Ĥ''.


In English


Replacement of /t/

In English, the glottal stop occurs as an open juncture (for example, between the vowel sounds in ''uh-oh!'',) and allophonically in t-glottalization. In
British English British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...
, the glottal stop is most familiar in the
Cockney Cockney is a dialect of the English language, mainly spoken in London and its environs, particularly by Londoners with working-class and lower middle class roots. The term ''Cockney'' is also used as a demonym for a person from the East End, ...
pronunciation of "butter" as "bu'er". Geordie English often uses glottal stops for t, k, and p, and has a unique form of glottalization. Additionally, there is the glottal stop as a null onset for English; in other words, it is the non-phonemic glottal stop occurring before isolated or initial vowels. Often a glottal stop happens at the beginning of vowel
phonation The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defi ...
after a silence. Although this segment is not a
phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...
in English, it occurs phonetically in nearly all dialects of English, as an
allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...
of in the syllable coda. Speakers of Cockney,
Scottish English Scottish English is the set of varieties of the English language spoken in Scotland. The transregional, standardised variety is called Scottish Standard English or Standard Scottish English (SSE). Scottish Standard English may be defined ...
and several other British dialects also pronounce an intervocalic between vowels as in ''city''. In
Received Pronunciation Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent of British English regarded as the Standard language, standard one, carrying the highest Prestige (sociolinguistics), social prestige, since as late as the beginning of the 2 ...
, a glottal stop is inserted before a tautosyllabic voiceless stop: stop, that, knock, watch, also leap, soak, help, pinch. In
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...
, a "t" is usually not aspirated in syllables ending either in a vowel + "t", such as "cat" or "outside"; or in a "t" + unstressed vowel + "n", such as "mountain" or "Manhattan". This is referred to as a "held t" as the airflow is stopped by tongue at the ridge behind the teeth. However, there is a trend of younger speakers in the Mid-Atlantic states to replace the "held t" with a glottal stop, so that "Manhattan" sounds like "Man-haʔ-in" or "Clinton" like "Cli(n)ʔ-in", where "ʔ" is the glottal stop. This may have crossed over from
African American Vernacular English African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban communities, by most working- and middle-class African Americans and some Black Canadians. Having its own unique grammatical, voca ...
, particularly that of New York City.


Before initial vowels

Most English speakers today often use a glottal stop before the initial vowel of words beginning with a vowel, particularly at the beginning of sentences or phrases or when a word is emphasized. This is also known as "hard attack". Traditionally in
Received Pronunciation Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent of British English regarded as the Standard language, standard one, carrying the highest Prestige (sociolinguistics), social prestige, since as late as the beginning of the 2 ...
, "hard attack" was seen as a way to emphasize a word. Today, in British, American and other varieties of English, it is increasingly used not only to emphasize but also simply to separate two words, especially when the first word ends in a glottal stop.


Occurrence in other languages

In many languages that do not allow a sequence of vowels, such as Persian, the glottal stop may be used epenthetically to prevent such a hiatus. There are intricate interactions between falling tone and the glottal stop in the histories of such languages as Danish (see stød),
Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...
and Thai. In many languages, the unstressed intervocalic allophone of the glottal stop is a creaky-voiced glottal approximant. It is known to be contrastive in only one language, Gimi, in which it is the voiced equivalent of the stop.
lītora jactētur odiīs Jūnōnis inīquae
The table below demonstrates how widely the sound of glottal stop is found among the world's
spoken language A spoken language is a form of communication produced through articulate sounds or, in some cases, through manual gestures, as opposed to written language. Oral or vocal languages are those produced using the vocal tract, whereas sign languages ar ...
s:


See also

* Saltillo * Index of phonetics articles *
Hamza The hamza ( ') () is an Arabic script character that, in the Arabic alphabet, denotes a glottal stop and, in non-Arabic languages, indicates a diphthong, vowel, or other features, depending on the language. Derived from the letter '' ʿayn'' ( ...
* Voiced pharyngeal fricative


References


Bibliography

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External links

* {{IPA navigation Glottal consonants Plosives Pulmonic consonants Oral consonants