Glottalisation

The phonological behavior of ejectives and implosives as well as their relation with other glottalic sounds pose a number of serious problems to current phonological theories. This paper reveals some of these deficiencies and presents an alternative representation of these segments based on the notion of phonological complexity, as proposed in Sagey (1986) and tentatively applied to glottalized sounds in McCarthy (1989).

The chapter discusses phonetic, phonological, evolutionary, and typological properties of two particular features in the vanishing Udihe language (Tungusic): vowel aspiration and glottalisation. In their evolution, traced from the end of the 19 th century to the 2000s, two main aspects are distinguished: (1) a qualitative evolution from consonants to vowel features and word-prosodic features and (2) a loss of the syllabic boundary between two short vowels, where the original consonants occurred. While aspiration is nearly lost, glottalisation can now be occasionally realised as a pitch dip within a long vowel. The latter realisations do not, however, necessarily imply the transformation of glottalisation into a lexical pitch-accent or tone. They rather represent an articulatory target undershoot, which is at least partially induced by the process of language loss and the influence of "lax" Russian articulation. On the other hand, Udihe glottalisation has already accumulated enough word-prosodic features to permit also a phonological analysis as a glottal prosody, typologically similar to Danish stød and lexical laryngeal prosodies in some Otomanguean languages. In spite of a potential for further word-prosodic development, glottalisation is likely to be lost, in the same way as aspiration. This pathway is suggested by the pressure of the dominating Russian language which lacks such features.

A speaker who issues a confirming turn starting with particles like yes, oui, ja, and so on, may mean to extend it and provide further material. This study shows that French and German speakers employ the same phonetic contrast to indicate the nature of that turn continuation. In spite of the typological difference between the German use of glottalization and the French use of linking phenomena for word boundaries involving word-initial vowels, speakers of both languages exploit this contrast systematically in their design of multiunit turns. Initial confirmations are joined directly to subsequent vowel-fronted turn components when speakers respond with an internally cohesive multiunit confirming turn. The components are separated by glottalization when responses involve multiple actions or departures from a trajectory projected by the turn-initial confirmation. This is further evidence that sound patterns shape interaction and are not solely determined by language-specific phonologies. Data are in French and German with English translation.

Baṭḥari is one of the six Modern South Arabian languages spoken in Oman and Yemen and belonging to the Western branch of the Semitic family. Once supposedly spoken in a wider area at the extreme East of Dhofar region, recent fieldwork revealed that only 12 elders from the Baṭaḥira tribe remember the language at various degrees of proficiency. It is very likely that Baṭḥari will disappear in less than a couple of decades with the death of the last speakers and no action other than documentation and description can be made to secure memory of this language. The present paper presents the first results of an ongoing study conducted over a corpus sample of oral texts collected by prof. Miranda Morris and Khalifa Hamood al-Baṭḥari for the “Documentation and Ethnolinguistic Analysis of the Modern South Arabian languages” project. The concurrence of two phonetic processes in the Baṭḥari phonetic system, namely pharyngealization and glottalization, will be explored in detail. These two processes are involved in the realization of the socalled “emphatics”, which are known to show both kinds of realization in various contexts in MSAL (Watson & Bellem 2011; Ridouane & al. 2015). The analysis of Morris’ sample was
followed by a period of fieldwork in Autumn 2016, in order to gather more material and gain a better knowledge on this heavily endangered language.

The study sets out a decription of the phonological system of Oromo. It includes a presentation of the sounds and phonemes of the language and the way they tend to combine, as well as a description and classification of regular and contextually well-defined processes of sound change. Suprasegmental patterns are described in less detail. The description is based on the Western dialects, among which Mechaa (spoken in the Wellegga area) is the major representative. Dialectal variation is pointed out whenever significant correspondences can be established through the descriptions of previous works.

The aim of this study was to analyse the variation associated with the variables (ju) and (t) within data collected on the Island of Mersea in Essex and thus contribute to the limited analyses that have been completed so far regarding East Anglian Englishes.

The speech of sixteen speakers, gained through informal conversation was analysed and equally spread across two generations and genders. This allowed the impact of two social dimensions to be investigated alongside any relevant linguistic factors pertaining to each variable. Social variation was aimed to be minimised by the desire to use data from those who had lived their whole lives on the island and, in order to maintain consistency, only those informants from the western part of the island were used for this study
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The analyses showed that traditional variants present in both the SED and older generation data, such as yod-less and flapped variants, are on the decline in favour of a more standard [ju] and glottal stop variants, respectively.

This paper looks at the use of /r/-sandhi in the speech of Queen Elizabeth II. Potential contexts of /r/-sandhi were identified and analysed for the presence or absence of rhoticity and glottalisation in a corpus of Christmas speeches over a period of seven decades. The results show that the Queen avoids intrusive /r/ altogether but that she uses linking /r/ in most potential cases, that glottalisation is common when /r/-sandhi is not used, and that linking /r/ and glottalisation can also co-occur. A comparison with a longitudinal corpus of speakers also shows that the Queen resembles group-level trends in the case of linking /r/ but differs in the case of intrusive /r/. The results also indicate that a number of phonetic and usage-based variables influence linking /r/ usage, including previously unreported factors such as vowel quality collocation frequency. The findings are discussed in the context of usage-based theory.

Выявление просодических признаков нередко представляет значительные трудности в тех случаях, когда изучаемый признак не имеет смыслоразличительной роли и не образует функционально значимой корреляции в данном языке. К такого рода признакам относится глоттализация в германских языках. Единственным литературным языком, где глоттализация (толчок) релевантна, является датский; в норме и в большинстве датских диалектов толчок локализуется как признак фонем или слогов и имеет две вариантные реализации – сжато-гортанную и смычно-гортанную, из которых более обычной является первая. Происхождение датского толчка не получило убедительного объяснения, но реконструкция стимулировала поиски аналогов в других германских языках. В немецком и английском языке глоттализация (твердый приступ гласного) выступает в качестве пограничного сигнала начала слова или морфемы. Сфера употребления глоттализации в немецком языке шире, чем в английском, так как в английском языке твердый приступ требует сильного фразового ударения, а в немецком он возможен и в слабоударном положении, в том числе в позиции внутреннего сандхи. Датский язык в данном отношении примыкает к английскому: твердый приступ возможен здесь лишь в сильноударном предложении,  но и там он факультативен. Преглоттализация глухих  представлена в ряде английских диалектов. Та же просодия генерализована в диалектах Ютландии (т.н. западноютский толчок на кратком гласном), где она характеризует целые классы словоформ. В части английских диалектов отмечают также замену /t/ гортанной смычкой в ауслауте:  В датских говорах зафиксирован переход в обратном направлении от толчка к согласному. В немецком ареале данные явления не отмечены. Недавно была инструментально подтверждена еще одна позиция, где развивается толчок: в кластерах Носовой + Зубной + Носовой глоттализация выступает как средство экономии артикуляционных жестов, происходит сдвиг /ntn/ > /n ? n/. Данное явление характерно для американского английского и для нижненемецкого разговорного языка. По предварительным наблюдениям, оно является инновацией недавнего времени; в пользу этого говорит тот факт, что сама последовательность /n ? n/ возникает в результате элизии шва.

Glottalization of coda /t, p/ is a common process in American English. This study uses acoustic measures to determine when coda glottalization occurs in the conversational speech of the Buckeye Corpus. Vowels preceding coda /t, p/ tokens for 40 speakers were analyzed using H1*–H2*, an acoustic correlate of glottal constriction. Results indicate that coda glottalization is more common before a sonorant, and this effect is still found phrase-finally, even when phrasal creak is taken into account. Nonetheless, the process occurs in other environments. While we conclude that coda glottalization may occur to enhance the voicelessness of coda /t/ before sonorants (Pierrehumbert 1995, Stevens & Keyser 1989), we argue that this cannot fully explain the phenomenon.

This is a short (one page, with 8 pages of tables) presentation about the use of glottal symbols to help learners pronounce Chavacano words correctly, as well as to differentiate Chavacano loanwords and similar words in other Philippine languages.

In American English, the presence of creaky voice can derive from distinct linguistic processes, including phrasal creak (prolonged irregular voicing, often at edges of prosodic phrases) and coda /t/ glottalization (when the alveolar closure for syllable-final /t/ is replaced by or produced simultaneously with glottal constriction). Previous work has shown that listeners can differentiate words in phrasal creak from those with /t/ glottalization, which suggests that there are acoustic differences between the creaky voice derived from phrasal creak and /t/ glottalization. In this study, we analyzed vowels preceding syllable-final /t/ in the Buckeye Corpus, which includes audio recordings of spontaneous speech from 40 speakers of American English. Tokens were coded for presence of phrasal creak (prolonged irregular voicing extending beyond the target syllable) and /t/ glottaliza-tion (whether the /t/ was produced only with glottal constriction). Eleven spectral measures of voice quality, including both harmonic and noise measures, were extracted automatically and discriminant analyses were performed. The results indicate that the discriminant functions can classify these sources of creaky voice above chance, and that Cepstral Peak Prominence, a measure of harmonics-to-noise ratio, is important for distinguishing phrasal creak from glottalization.

A salient aspect of the tone system of Hanoi Vietnamese is its use of phonation-type characteristics. This pilot study investigates intonational variation in the realization of two tones: tone 3 (ngã), a rising tone with a strong glottalization in its first half, and tone 6 (nặng), which starts on a middle pitch and usually falls dramatically because of a strong glottalization in its second half. This study focuses on how speaker attitude affects the realization of glottalization on two sentence-final particles (SFPs) carrying tones 3 and 6: đã [IPA: ɗa3], conveying tense-aspect-modality information, and ạ [IPA: a6], conveying politeness. Audio and electroglottographic recordings from 4 male speakers suggest that glottalization is phased earlier for surprise than for declaration. Irritation also tends to be reflected in earlier glottalization, but with an added glottal constriction at the very end. A methodological challenge is that phonetic realizations of tones 3 and 6 span a wide range of states of the glottis. A procedure is proposed for detecting the complex-repetitive patterns found in cases of lapse into creaky phonation (vocal fry). This helps quantify glottalization phenomena, with a view to arriving at a model that can be used in speech processing.

Conference talk given at the 10th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 10), 26-28 June 2019, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands.

Sociolinguistic research has established that some phonetic variables undergoing change attract the attention of people in a speech community, while others do not. This phenomenon has been linked to the notion of ‘salience’ (e.g. Rácz 2013); highly salient variables tend to elicit strong social associations that are uniform across different macro-sociological groups in a community, while non-salient features display a weaker but wider range of perceptual variation between groups (Schleef 2017). It is not yet known, however, whether this distinction in perception is influenced by individuals’ use of particular salient and non-salient linguistic variables to create social meaning in their own speech production.

This paper investigates this issue via a production and perception study of /t/-glottalling and goose-fronting in Southern British English. Both features are on the increase in young people’s speech in the south-east of England (Fabricius 2000; Holmes-Elliott 2015) but differ in terms of their salience. /t/-glottalling may be used as a socially meaningful resource in speech production (Kirkham & Moore 2016) and is perceived consistently across different social groups (Schleef 2017), while goose-fronting is not reported to index any social associations. Accordingly, this study investigates how these two variables are used in participants’ speech and whether they exhibit diversity in social meanings in both production and perception. 

Data were collected from 45 participants aged 16-19 in Hampshire, UK. The production data consist of recordings of the participants completing reading tasks and group discussions. Tokens of /t/ were analysed auditorily and goose was analysed in terms of the F1~F2 Euclidean distance from each speaker’s fleece vowel. All statistical modelling was conducted using linear and logistic mixed models. Perception data was elicited using questionnaires and group conversations to evaluate recordings of fellow local speakers, whose use of /t/ and goose varied between stimuli. Results show that /t/-glottalling displays socio-indexical variation in production according to macro-sociological variables, in contrast to goose-fronting, which varies along micro-level groups specific to the community. The perceptual data show strong social associations for /t/-glottalling, but rare and inconsistent associations for goose-fronting. Based on these results, I argue that salience can influence phonetic features’ macro-level indexical meanings, but that these meanings take on a more complex life in the micro context of the local community. In doing so, I also address the issue of defining and operationalising the concept of ‘salience’ in the study of sociolinguistic meaning.

References

Fabricius, A. (2000). T-glottalling between stigma and prestige: A sociolinguistic study of modern RP. PhD thesis, Copenhagen Business School.
Holmes-Elliott, S. (2015). London calling: Assessing the spread of metropolitan features in the southeast. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.
Kirkham, S. & E. Moore (2016). Constructing social meaning in political discourse: Phonetic variation and verb processes in Ed Miliband’s speeches. Language in Society, 45, 87-111.
Rácz, P. (2013). Salience in sociolinguistics: A quantitative approach. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Schleef, E. (2017). Social meanings across listener groups: When do social factors matter? Journal of English Linguistics, 45, 28-59.

Oromo, a Cushitic language of Ethiopia and Kenya, is a language characterized by particularly complex morphophonology. It provides extremely interesting data for linguistic research on the nature of long vowels and geminate consonants, because long sequences are very common and have a high functional load. The focus of this study is to provide a systematic description and analysis of long sequences, with particular reference to the grammatical functioning of the length parameter. The findings prove that there is a length morphological unit that is phonologically interpreted as a copying process, it can also be asserted that the language treats vowel and consonant length in a systematic way. The analysis supports the autosegmental interpretation of long segments as single units in the quality tier and as two units in the quantity tier. However, some data contradict the universal and obligatory nature of this representation in identical segments belonging to different morphemes, because distinctions between many-to-one and one-to-one associations are necessary to account for the facts of particular languages. This dissertation works within the theory of phonological weight, because it permits the autosegmental expression of significant differences between the segments according to their initial and final quantity as well as to the way in which the quality tier associates with the quantity tier.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the extent of advance made by T-glottalling and T-voicing in younger RP (Received Pronunciation) speakers. The scope of the research extends no further than two speakers, actors Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, with speech analysed being extracted from publicly available interviews with the two. We believe, however, that their speech habits are fairly typical of the non-regional Southern British accent characteristic of their generation. Furthermore, what makes their speech worthy of attention is the fact that millions of young EFL learners have seen the Harry Potter series of films Radcliffe and Watson starred in, thus making the actors potentially very popular EFL pronunciation role models, at least for those learners who have Standard British pronunciation as their target. The results obtained are compared with those from an extensive and systematic study of young RP speech conducted by Fabricius (2000) regarding glottal replacement, and with the study of newsreader RP by Hannisdal (2006) regarding T-voicing.

Received Pronunciation seems to be changing due to the influence of one of the basilects of English in England, Cockney. Such features of Cockney as glottal replacement for /t/ are being adapted by an increasing group of young RP speakers. It is thus possible that these features could constitute the version of RP taught to EFL learners in the future.

The aim of this research was to further the understanding of how t-glottaling affects the perception of RP by Polish learners of English. The author’s hypothesis was that it would be an impediment for intelligibility. The research focused on word-final /t/s, as those seem to cause the most problems, as RP speakers tend to glottalise them after both checked and free vowels. Whereas it would be easy to reconstruct the meaning of a word with a syllable including a checked vowel, i.e. one that has to be followed by a consonant, there are twice as many possibilities of interpreting words with free vowels followed by a glottal stop. As an example, some would interpret [biːʔ] as beat but others as bee.

The experiment designed to test the hypothesis relied on an online questionnaire. The subjects were 30 female BA students at AMU School of English: 15 1BA and 15 3BA students. Their task was to listen to sixteen short audio files containing words and phrases excised from interviews with a prototypical RP speaker relying heavily on t-glottaling (Prince Henry of Wales), and then take a single choice test, deciding what word or phrase they had heard. Apart from 3 distractions, the audio files comprised:
• 10 samples containing a glottalised /t/ word-finally after long or short vowels and providing as possible answers words both with and without /t/; for example for [ɡreɪʔ] the respondents could choose between great and grey;
• 3 samples not containing a glottalised /t/ word-finally, and ending with a long vowel or diphthong, but providing as answers words both with and without /t/; for example for /deɪ/ the options included Dave, date and day.

The perception tests confirmed that t-glottaling has a marked negative influence on the students’ perception of English. Surprisingly, the results showed that 1BA students were more successful in the perception of t-glottaling their 3BA colleagues, despite being supposedly less experienced.

However, the discrepancy between the two groups was not clear-cut, as the 1BA students often heard glottalised /t/ even if it was not there. As a comparison, the 3BA students scored higher in all the tricky questions that did not contain /ʔ/.

The focus on Indo-European languages has not made it easy for the discipline of historical linguistics to accept "special" kinds of sounds in the same way as those which happen to survive in Western languages. Sounds which may seem "uncommon" from the Indo-European perspective need not be "uncommon" or "dif-ficult" by more objective Standards, and sounds which may seem "simple" are not objectively so: cf. The fricatives ? Or 0. The concept of "simplicity" can be deceptive ~ it tends to lead to subjective and ethnocentric judgments: "For what seems *easy' in one language is difficult in another" (Lehmann 1962:173), Linguists are conscious of this subjectivism ~ and still: sounds produced with pharynx air — the so-called "glottalized" sounds — have the reputation of being unusual, marked, special and difficult. This became obvious when the attempt was made to re- place the well-established Proto-Indoeuropean (PIE) series of aspirated obstruents by a "glottalized" series, namely (p') t' c' k' k'w (cf. Hock 1978:621), It stirred considerable unrest among general linguists, and one of the reasons for this may be the (somewhat irrational) perception that glottalization is unusual and "difficult".