Is the glottal stop phonemic in English?

Guest   Thu Jan 12, 2006 8:35 pm GMT
Is it?
Kirk   Thu Jan 12, 2006 8:39 pm GMT
For a few dialects but not most.
Thomas   Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:11 am GMT
I just noticed something weird. Is a word-initial glottal stop mandatory when a word starting with /@r/ is preceding one ending in /@r/, e.g.

"mother earth": /mVD@r ?@rT/

?
Uriel   Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:16 am GMT
Not mandatory, but it certainly helps distinguish the two as separate words.
Jim   Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:54 am GMT
I'd say /m6D@r3:T/ with a good old intrusive "r".
Guest   Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:56 am GMT
<<For a few dialects but not most.>>

Okay, so I guess my ESL teacher must have been wrong then, because my ESL teacher told us that it was phonemic.

Also, I'm having trouble distinguishing the aspirated "k", "p ", "t" in ''kit'', ''pit'' and ''table'' and the non-aspirated ''k'', ''p'' and ''t'' in ''skin'', ''spit'' and ''star''. I always mispronounce ''kit'', ''pit'' and ''table'' with the non-aspirated stops. Can you give me advice on how I can produce the aspirated ''k'', ''p'' and ''t''? I'm having trouble with those aspirated stops. I've always been mispronouncing ''kite'' with the non-aspirated ''k''. One time I said it was cold outside with a non-aspirated ''k'' and someone thought I said ''gold'' and so responded ''What's gold''? There was also once time when I said the word ''pitch'' with a non-aspirated ''p'' and I had a hard time convincing someone that I didn't say the word ''bitch''.
Jim   Fri Jan 13, 2006 4:05 am GMT
I'm not sure that it is phonemic even in a few dialects. Kirk, which ones & how?
SpaceFlight   Fri Jan 13, 2006 4:09 am GMT
<<I'm not sure that it is phonemic even in a few dialects. Kirk, which ones & how?>>

Yeah, I've never heard of it being phonemic in any dialect.
Mxsmanic   Fri Jan 13, 2006 4:28 am GMT
Your ESL teacher was mistaken. The glottal stop is not phonemic in any standard pronunciation of English (that is, not in RP or GAE, but it depends on how broadly you define standard).

In theory, aspiration of the consonants you mention is not phonemic, but it is true that some people may misinterpret what they hear if a consonant is not aspirated where it normally would be. Without aspiration, there is far less difference between 'p' and 'b' or between 'k' and 'g' (but there is still a difference).

Aspiration in this context means that air is moving through the vocal tract before the obstruction of the tract is removed, such that there's a kind of audible puff of air behind the consonant. If you normally pronounce consonants without aspiration, you are holding your breath when you pronounce the consonant. Start exhaling as you pronounce it, and you should get the little puff of air that makes it aspirate. You can hear it, and usually you can feel it if you hold a feather or something close to your mouth.

To someone who is expecting an aspirated consonant in certain positions, a consonant that isn't aspirated may sound very similar to the corresponding voiced consonant. Thus, unaspirated 'p' may sound like 'b,' and unaspirated 'k' may sound like 'g.' People who have heard both aspirated and unaspirated consonants in all positions will distinguish them, but those who have not may misinterpret until they've been exposed to them a bit more. The fundamental phonemic distinction in English is between voiced and unvoiced, however.
Lazar   Fri Jan 13, 2006 4:50 am GMT
<<I'm not sure that it is phonemic even in a few dialects. Kirk, which ones & how?>>

Yeah, I've never actually heard of it being phonemic in any dialects. In Estuary and Cockney, for example - as far as I know - it's only ever just an allophone of /t/.
Kirk   Fri Jan 13, 2006 5:46 am GMT
<<I'm not sure that it is phonemic even in a few dialects. Kirk, which ones & how?>>

I've read on a couple language forums that some speakers do seem to have a phonemic glottal stop. I believe these speakers were from Scotland, tho of course I wouldn't expect it to apply to everyone there. These are the threads I found:

http://www.spinnoff.com/zbb/viewtopic.php?t=12505&highlight=phonemic+glottal+stop

http://www.spinnoff.com/zbb/viewtopic.php?t=14300&start=0

To be fair, without further evidence (which may be out there but I'm not away of) I wouldn't say it was phonemic for those people for sure (as the poster Rory indicates he's not sure, tho there are minimal pairs with it).

Needless to say, it's safe to say that for the vast majority of English speakers glottal stops are not phonemic.
Travis   Fri Jan 13, 2006 7:44 am GMT
>>English examples include Cockney and New England pronounciations of words like 'bottle' /ba?'l/ and 'battle' /bæ?'l/).<<

You are confusing surface forms and underlying forms here. The matter is that while [?] does show up in surface forms in many places in English dialects, including in the two places which you speak of above, that in no manner means that such cases are at all phonemic. In the two cases you mention above, the most likely analysis would be that [?] is just an allophone of /t/, like with most cases of [?] in English dialects.
Kirk   Fri Jan 13, 2006 8:13 am GMT
<<Glottal stops do exist in some English accents even though they are never written in the standard language. Some varieties of Irish also have glottal stops which likewise are never written in standard Irish as in Ulster Irish duhw? (black) and tah? (house) written as dubh and teach. .

English examples include Cockney and New England pronounciations of words like 'bottle' /ba?'l/ and 'battle' /bæ?'l/).>>

By using slashes you're implying phonemicity. For a word like "battle" in Cockney it'd be /bQt@l/ --> ["bQ?o] and "battle" for a couple New England dialects might be /b{tl/ --> ["b{?5=].

<<Some of the best examples of glottal stops are in the native American languages of the Pacific Nortwest and Alaska.>>

Yes, many languages have phonemic /?/. Arabic is another example.
Travis   Fri Jan 13, 2006 10:26 pm GMT
>>What is surprising is that glottal stops are rare in European languages much like the velar u sound of Korean, Japanese and Turkish which turns up again in some dialects of Irish and Scottish Gaelic of all places.<<

Actually, that "velar u sound" which you refer to, which is actually /M/, that is, a unrounded high (tense) back vowel, does also exist in English dialects as well. In particular, it exists in Californian English dialects such as Kirk's dialect.
Kirk   Fri Jan 13, 2006 11:01 pm GMT
I've seen that sound in Korean transcribed as /M/ and /1/ but /1/ is most accurate according to how I hear most native Korean speakers say it and how my professors said it in my Korean classes. It's normally much fronter than /M/, probably because Korean also does have a true /u/, and having a phonemic contrast between /M/ and /u/, while not impossible, is probably disfavored in terms of linguistic typology and universals.

The orthographical representation of /1/ is 으 in 한글 ('Hangeul', the Korean alphabet), or "eu" in official Romanization.

As Travis said, my normal /u/ is actually quite fronted and unrounded, as is typical in many parts of the West and in particular, California. It's somewhere in between /M/ and /1/, but I usually just use /M/ to transcribe it.