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The phonological status of word-initial glottal stops in Persian has been a subject of controversy. Particularly, researchers hold divergent views on whether the glottal stop functions as a phoneme in word-initial positions. These perspectives can be categorized into three main positions: (1) glottal stops are phonemes in all occurrences (Samareh, 1985; Windfuhr, 1979); (2) word-initial glottal stops are phonemes only in loanwords, especially from Arabic (Bijankhan, 2018; Haghshenas, 1991; Jam, 2019; Kord-Zaferanloo-Kambozia, 2003); and (3) word-initial glottal stops are not phonemes in Persian (Jahani, 2005; Majidi & Ternes, 1999; Sepanta, 1973). In this paper, a critical review of previous findings is provided along with new insights and neglected evidence relevant to the underlying representations of words with glottal stops. Based on these considerations, the paper leans towards the position that glottal stops function as phonemes in all positions regardless of occurrence in loanwords or native words. It also calls for a revision of previous research, emphasizing the importance of non-acoustic aspects in exploring the phonological functions of word-initial glottal stops.

Throaty speech sounds like glottal stops, creaky voice, and epiglottal stops are phonemic speech sounds found in various languages cross-linguistically, yet voice and speech literature has historically associated such sounds with poor vocal technique, vocal misuse, and/or vocal abuse. Currently, there is no clear evidence to support the notion that speech sounds which serve as realizations of phonemes in one language are unhealthy when used prosodically in another. Speech sounds targeted (both historically and contemporarily) for reduction and removal from speech patterns for supposed health concerns in English-speaking voice training tend to be the same speech sounds which are targeted as socially undesirable compared with standardized accents of English. Critical examination of cross-linguistic evidence, social context, and previous historical assumptions are necessary to challenge the classification of a speech sound as poor technique or vocal misuse/abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glottalization in English has a rich history of research, most of it focusing on the origin, social characteristics, and change in the feature over time. Glottalization has been shown to be a robust variable, its form influenced by phontetic, social, and regional factors. The current study also explores these issues but with the advantage of two samples of speech: one from the 1930s comprising 17 speakers, and one from the 1990s, comprising 53 (31 females and 22 males). Most of the 1930s group, which represented all available speakers, were over 50; the 1990s sample ranged in age from childhood through old age, with the majority being 16 through 40. This time depth allows us to see the possible origin of this feature in an isolated rural area and its change over time as the regional demographics change. We present arguments that the phonetic and social factors surrounding glottalization interacted to produce a new form (glottal replacement) with newly evolving social meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phonology of several Kuki-Chin (South Central Trans-Himalayan) languages have been described well, and there are fragmentary sketches of numerous others. Extensive diachronic work has also been done for the languages of this group. However, there is no comprehensive survey of the synchronic phonologies of Kuki-Chin languages. This chapter attempts to fill that gap so that researchers working on one of these languages, or doing broader typological surveys, can easily grasp the broad sound patterns in, and phonological questions raised by, Kuki-Chin. The chapter covers syllable structure, onsets, rhymes, and morphophonology. Onsets and rhymes are illustrated with complete inventories for Proto-Kuki-Chin and six attested Kuki-Chin languages from various subgroups (Falam, Mara, Thado, Daai, Lemi, Sorbung, and Monsang) and a comparative perspective on each of these inventories. This is followed by a discussion of the broader issues in Kuki-Chin sound inventories and phonotactics. These issues include laryngeal contrasts in obstruents and sonorants, the special status of glottal stop, and vowel length distinctions. A range of morphophonological alternations are then addressed, including the widespread phenomenon of non-final shortening (illustrated with observations from Thado, Daai, Sorbung, Falam, and Zophei) and vowel harmony (attested in at least Lamkang and Hyow). Apophony in stem form alterations and transitivity alternations is also discussed, drawing largely on data from Hakha Lai.

Abstract: This paper describes and analyzes phonological processes pertinent to the glottal stop in A’ingae (or Cofán, iso 639-3: ). The operations which the glottal stops undergo and trigger reveal an interaction of two morphophonological parameters: stratum and stress dominance. First, verbal suffixes are organized in two morphophonological domains, or strata. Within the inner domain, glottal stops affect stress placement, which I analyze as an interaction with foot structure. In the outer domain, glottal stops do not have any effects on stress. Second, some verbal suffixes delete stress (i. e. they are dominant). Dominance is unpredictable and independent of the suffix’s morphophonological domain, but dominance and the phonological domain interact in a non-trivial way: only inner dominant suffixes delete glottalization. To account for the A’ingae data, I adopt Cophonologies by Phase (Sande et al. 2020), which (i) models phonological stratification while (ii) allowing for morpheme-specific phonological idiosyncrasies, which (iii) interact with the phonological grammar of their stratum. Stress deletion triggered by the dominant suffixes is modeled with AntiFaithfulness (Alderete 1999, 2001). Antifaithfulness to a metrical foot entails antifaithfulness to its features (glottalization). This captures the fact that only the inner dominant suffixes delete glottal stops.

Grammatical gender form influences readers' mental gender representations. Previous research demonstrates that the generic masculine form leads to male-biased representations, while some alternative forms lead to female-biased representations. The present research examines the recently introduced glottal stop form in spoken language in German, where a glottal stop (similar to a short pause), meant to represent all gender identities, is inserted before the gender-specific ending. In two experiments (total N = 1188), participants listened to sentences in the glottal stop, the generic masculine, or the generic feminine form and classified whether a second sentence about women or men was a sensible continuation. The generic feminine and the glottal stop led to female biases (fewer errors in sentences about women vs. men) and the generic masculine led to a male bias. The biases were smaller for the glottal stop and the generic masculine than for the generic feminine, indicating that the former two are more readily understood as representing both women and men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Congenital cleft lip and palate is one of the common deformities in the craniomaxillofacial region. The current study aimed to explore the perceptual pattern of cleft-related speech produced by Mandarin-speaking patients with repaired cleft palate using the task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (task-fMRI) technique. Three blocks of speech stimuli, including hypernasal speech, the glottal stop, and typical speech, were played to 30 typical adult listeners with no history of cleft palate speech exploration. Using a randomized block design paradigm, the participants were instructed to assess the intelligibility of the stimuli. Simultaneously, fMRI data were collected. Brain activation was compared among the three types of speech stimuli. Results revealed that greater blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) responses to the cleft-related glottal stop than to typical speech were localized in the right fusiform gyrus and the left inferior occipital gyrus. The regions responding to the contrast between the glottal stop and cleft-related hypernasal speech were located in the right fusiform gyrus. More significant BOLD responses to hypernasal speech than to the glottal stop were localized in the left orbital part of the inferior frontal gyrus and middle temporal gyrus. More significant BOLD responses to typical speech than to the glottal stop were localized in the left inferior temporal gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, left medial superior frontal gyrus, and right angular gyrus. Furthermore, there was no significant difference between hypernasal speech and typical speech. In conclusion, the typical listener would initiate different neural processes to perceive cleft-related speech. Our findings lay a foundation for exploring the perceptual pattern of patients with repaired cleft palate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two artefacts located in private collections are the focus of this study. A caplock pistol and a Holy Bible, both dating from the middle of the 19th century and originating from England, are examined in order to be coaxed to 'speak'. They belonged to Nga'ara and María Angata Veri Tahi respectively, who are among the most recognized Indigenous personalities of pre- and post-1864 Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Despite admitting (on our part) that their ambitions ran to more than possessing foreign high-status commodities, fresh details may be gleaned about the personal dimensions of the great chief and rongorongo master Nga'ara and the keen visionary and 'Prophetess' Angata. In like manner, we may learn via these artefacts about the negotiation and rapprochement with outsiders – the acculturation, hybridity, and social transformations that were progressively advancing in this remote Polynesian outpost during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This study takes interest in showing how these outré cultural by-products were put in use to build and reinforce Nga'ara's and Angata's identities, the communities in which they lived, and their religious-political aspirations. Subservient to this endeavour is the cross-disciplinary inquisitive approach that comes into play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Bahdini Kurdish (henceforth, BK), the realisation and the phonetic features of the glottal stop (GS) has not been extensively investigated and there is a debate about its phonemic status. In one hand, it is considered a phoneme that occurs only in a word-initial position. On the other hand, it is not con- sidered a phoneme but optionally produced at the beginning of vowel-initial words and does not affect meaning. The study aims at identifying the realisation of this sound experimentally, analyses its acous- tic features and whether it is affected by parameters such as vowel type, vowel position in the word and stress. The study is based on read speech produced by 10 BK native speakers. Then it is analysed phonetically using Praat to identify the presence/absence of the GS. Then the number of occurrences of the GSs are compared across vowel types, vowel position and stress. The results show that the GS is an epenthetic sound in BK that is inserted by the speakers to avoid onsetless syllables and to avoid vowel clusters. Different phonetic variations of the sound are realized in BK: A clear closure of the glottal stop, intermittent vocal folds vibrations during the GS closure, vocal folds vibrations start sim- ultaneously with the GS release. It appears not to be affected by stress but by position, as it is found more medially in V+V contexts than initially, and vowel quality as it is produced more before low vowels than non-low vowels.

Glottal stops placed before words starting with a vowel are an integral part of the sound patterns of Czech; however, in Romance languages glottal stops are quite rare and linking to the previous word is much more common. In this study, we examine the extent to which more and less experienced Czech learners of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese (51 in total) use glottal stops or linking in their target language, and compare them with native speakers (29 in total). Analyses of word- and also morpheme-initial contexts reveal that the glottal stop is transferred into the learners’ target language word initially but almost never within words. In line with our hypotheses, the more experienced groups are found to use fewer glottal stops than the less experienced speakers, but still considerably more than the native control groups. We also consider the effect of lexical stress, segmental context and semantic status of the respective words on glottalization. Methodological implications for the teaching of Romance languages in the Czech context are also discussed.

The paper focuses on the ability of Czech speakers to explicitly imitate native English realizations of the phoneme /t/ as [ʔ] (t-glottaling). In Czech, glottalization occurs as a boundary signal of wordinitial vocalic onsets. We hypothesize that this allows for a better imitative performance in the intervocalic context as compared to non-prevocalic contexts. However, an alternative hypothesis based on language-external facts (frequency in the learners’ English input) predicts the opposite pattern. Our experiment involves 30 participants in a shadowing task. In addition to words with /t/, words with /k/ are examined to establish if speakers can generalize to a phonologically similar category to which they have not been exposed. Speakers adapted their pronunciation after exposure to t-glottaling to some degree. Our hypothesis was confirmed for the shadowing task, while the alternative language-external hypothesis was confirmed for the post-test task, suggesting a different pattern of performance in terms of imitation versus learning.

In their article in Elm-e Zaban (Volume 7, Issue 11) titled “Acoustic Analysis of Glottal Stop Occurrence before Initial Vowels in Persian Words”, Navab Safavi et al report the findings of their research on the acoustic features of the glottal stop before the word-initial vowels in the Persian language and try to answer the question whether this sound is a phoneme or not. The research is based on the recorded pronunciation of some non-words with the CVCV syllable structure and also 30 Persian words with word-initial glottal stops (or “vowels” as the authors argue). The authors suggest that the criteria for the existence of the glottal stop consonant in the word group are not verified and conclude that a full glottal stop with the characteristics of a consonant does not exist before the word-initial vowels in the Persian language. It seems that this acoustic research suffers from weaknesses in terms of assumptions, critique of previous studies, methodology, conclusion, and references. The most serious weakness is the confusion between the realms of phonology and phonetics, and the lack of distinction between the status and characteristics of the two branches of linguistics. This reply takes up a number of phonological and methodological issues which challenge the main conclusions of the authors.

Copyright of Taiwan Journal of Linguistics is the property of Graduate Institute of Linguistics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Glottal stops placed before words starting with a vowel are an integral part of the sound patterns of Czech; however, in Romance languages glottal stops are quite rare and linking to the previous word is much more common. In this study, we examine the extent to which more and less experienced Czech learners of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese (51 in total) use glottal stops or linking in their target language, and compare them with native speakers (29 in total). Analyses of word- and also morpheme-initial contexts reveal that the glottal stop is transferred into the learners' target language word initially but almost never within words. In line with our hypotheses, the more experienced groups are found to use fewer glottal stops than the less experienced speakers, but still considerably more than the native control groups. We also consider the effect of lexical stress, segmental context and semantic status of the respective words on glottalization. Methodological implications for the teaching of Romance languages in the Czech context are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study, in the context of computational linguistics and acoustic phonetics, attempted to determine the acoustic features of glottal stop before the word initial vowels in the Persian language and to answer the question whether this sound is a consonant or is the characteristic of the initial vowel in the Persian. The research test groups consisted of three groups: (a) nonword group in which the vowel is located after a consonant except glottal stop, (b) nonword group in which the presence of glottal stop is clear before the vowel, and (c) the group containing 30 words of Farsi language which begin with vowels. The three groups were read and recorded by 16 sample members at the studio. Then, they were subjected to acoustic measures, duration, first formant, intensity and spectral tilt of vowels evaluation using The Praat software. The numerical values obtained were analyzed based on mean indices, variance and Scheffe test. It was found that the criteria for the existence of the glottal stop consonant in the word group were not verified; as a result, the complete stop that has the acoustic characteristics of a consonant does not exist before the word initial vowels in the Persian language. Therefore, the incomplete obstruction can be taken as the phonetic process that is added at the beginning of the initial vowel production, and it makes that vowel glottalized.

Many languages tend to mark vowel-initial words with a glottal stop in connected speech, especially when that word is in a prominent position (Garellek, 2014). This also happens in Maltese, even though the glottal stop here also occurs as a phoneme, so that the epenthetic glottal stop may significantly alter which other words the vowel-initial word is similar to. For the pair attur /ɑtːur/ versus qattus /ʔɑtːus/ (English ‘actor’ versus ‘cat’), adding an epenthetic glottal stop to the vowel-initial word renders the two words more similar. This provides an interesting test bed for the hypothesis of audience design. If speakers want to highlight the contrast between the two words, they should, in contrast to what usually happens when a word is prominent, not produce an epenthetic glottal stop. We tested this in a production experiment and found that speakers instead produce much more glottal stops for such vowel-initial words under a phonological contrast compared with a given version, and even slightly more than when under a lexical contrast (e.g., actor versus theatre). Our results provide an example of a limitation of audience design.

This study discusses the phenomenon of glottalization in the Bugis minority language in Malaysia. Previous studies had claimed that the presence of glottal stops in the Bugis lexical is limited atword final position only. The claimhowever, poses a question of whether glottal stop only presents at word final position in this language. Thus, this study was conducted to confirm the position where the presence of glottal stop by identifying its presence in the lexical of this language as well as to describe the acoustic characteristics of the glottal stop at the positions where they have been identified. Data for this study were obtained from fieldworks which involved questionnaires, interviews, recordings and observations. A total of 100 informants who are native speakers of Bugis from Bugis villages located in Pontian and Pasir Gudang, Johor were interviewed. Spectographic analysis using Praat was made to confirm the presence of glottal stops in the lexical obtained. The results of the spectrographic analysis show that glottal stop presents in four positions in words, namely intial, middle and final word positions as well as at prefix boundaries, for examples, [?ika], [bu?kãŋ], [b?mbe?] and [mã?-keda]. The presence of glottal stop at these word positions exhibits different phonological processes. The results reveal the real phenomenon of glottal stop in Bugis language which has not yet been explored previously. Thus, this study provides new knowledge and perspectives on the distribution of glottal stops in the Bugis language. This study has given an opportunity to researchers to further dig and explore more linguistic phenomena that can be found in the Bugis language, as well as contributes to the preservation of this language so that it does not overwhelm by the modernization and can continue to be practiced by the younger generation in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the ability of Czech speakers to explicitly imitate native English realizations of the phoneme /t/ as [?] (t-glottaling). In Czech, glottalization occurs as a boundary signal of wordinitial vocalic onsets. We hypothesize that this allows for a better imitative performance in the intervocalic context as compared to non-prevocalic contexts. However, an alternative hypothesis based on language-external facts (frequency in the learners' English input) predicts the opposite pattern. Our experiment involves 30 participants in a shadowing task. In addition to words with /t/, words with /k/ are examined to establish if speakers can generalize to a phonologically similar category to which they have not been exposed. Speakers adapted their pronunciation after exposure to t-glottaling to some degree. Our hypothesis was confirmed for the shadowing task, while the alternative language-external hypothesis was confirmed for the post-test task, suggesting a different pattern of performance in terms of imitation versus learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite abundant research on the distribution of word-initial glottal stops, it is still unclear which factors matter most in predicting where glottal stops occur and why. In this study, logistic mixed-effects regression modeling is used to predict the occurrence of word-initial full glottal stops in an English corpus. The results indicate that prominence and phrasing are overwhelmingly the most important factors in predicting full glottal stop occurrence. Moreover, prominent word-initial vowels that are not preceded by a glottal stop show acoustic correlates of glottal constriction, whereas non-prominent phrase-initial vowels do not. Rather, phrase-initial voicing (even for sonorants) is less regular, but in a manner inconsistent with glottal constriction. These findings are subsequently con_rmed using articulatory measures from electroglottography, and extended to Spanish. Based on the results, a prominence-driven theory of word-initial glottalization is proposed and motivated, with higher phrasal domains responsible for the strength of the glottal stop gesture.

Despite abundant research on the distribution of glottal stops and glottalization in English and other languages, it is still unclear which factors matter most in predicting where glottal stops occur. In this study, logistic mixed-effects regression modeling is used to predict the occurrence of word-initial full glottal stops vs. no voicing irregularity. The results indicate that prominence and phrasing are overwhelmingly the most important factors in predicting full glottal stop occurrence. Additionally, prominent word-initial vowels that are not preceded by full glottal stop show acoustic correlates of glottal constriction, whereas non-prominent phrase-initial vowels do not. Rather, phrase-initial voicing (even for sonorants) is less regular, but in a manner inconsistent with glottal constriction. Therefore, not all cases of voicing irregularity on wordinitial vowels should be attributed to the presence of a glottal stop gesture.

This article examines the production and perception of /t/ in five U.S. states: Indiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Utah, and Vermont. For the production study, 94 participants read a letter containing 24 prenasal word-medial /t/s (e.g., kitten) and 28 prevocalic word-final /t/s (e.g., not ever). Analysis indicated that younger speakers produced oral releases of prenasal word-medial /t/ more often than their older counterparts and that younger speakers and women realized prevocalic wordfinal /t/ as glottal stops more often than older speakers and men. For the matchedguise perception study, after listening to recordings of 22 White, female speakers that were digitally manipulated to differ in oral versus nasal releases of prenasal word-medial /t/ and the tap versus glottal stop pronunciations of prevocalic word-final /t/, participants rated speakers in terms of perceived age, friendliness, pleasantness, rurality, education level, and whether the speakers were from the same state as the participants. Speakers who used glottal stops were viewed as less educated and less friendly; those who used oral releases were perceived as more rustic and less educated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Forma y Funcion is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Linguistica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the glottal stop in word-final position as a variant of /s/ in Puerto Rican Spanish. Previous research (Tellado González 2007; Valentín-Márquez 2006) generally focused on the glottal stop in word-final position between vowels (e.g., /las alas/ 'the wings'). In this paper, we investigate the glottal stop not only in this context, but also in word-final position when preceded by a vowel and followed by a consonant (e.g., /los takos/ 'the tacos'), and in word-final position when preceded by a vowel and followed by a pause (e.g., /los takos#/ 'the tacos'). Specifically, the effects of following segment, stress of the following syllable, gender, age, and English use and proficiency on glottal stop production were investigated. The data came from sociolinguistic interviews with 19 participants (8 female, 11 male; Age range: 18–63 years) from San Juan, Carolina, and Guaynabo. The results showed that the glottal stop occurred not only between vowels, but also when followed by a consonant or a pause. Additionally, the glottal stop appeared significantly more before stressed syllables. There were no significant effects of age or gender. Although the effects of English use and proficiency were not significant, we discuss the potential role that contact with English may play in glottalization rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies onset glottal stop deletion in the speech of Suva Rotumans, Fiji. The speech of 18 speakers was analysed and seven factors were tested to identify their prediction on glottal stop deletion. The linguistic factors tested were preceding sound segment, grammatical class, syllable stress, and style, while the social factors were age, gender, and denominational affiliation. Results reveal a change in progress, but towards glottal stop retention. Younger Rotumans and older Rotuman women are deleting glottal stops less compared to middle-aged women and older men. The low incidence of deletion by younger speakers is most probably due to identity, language education in Rotuman, and their increased awareness of their role in preserving the language. Additionally, older women are deleting glottal stops less, which could be attributed to contact, identity, and their consciousness of the standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of the study is to investigate the use of incidences and characteristics of Prevocalic Electroglottographic Signal (PVES) derived from electroglottography (EGG) in characterizing glottal stops (GS) in cleft palate speech., Methods: Mandarin nonaspirated monosyllabic first-tone words were used for the speech sampling procedure. A total of 1680 utterances (from 83 patients with repaired cleft palates) were divided into three categories based on the results of auditory-perceptual evaluation of recorded speech sounds by three independent reviewers: [Category A (absence of GS agreed by all three reviewers) (n = 1192 tokens), Category B (two out of three reviewers agreed on the presence of a GS) (n = 181 tokens) and Category C (all three reviewers agreed on the presence of a GS) (n = 307 tokens)]. The EGG signals of the 1680 utterances were analyzed using a MATLAB program to automatically mark the instances of PVES (amplitude and time-interval) in the GS utterances., Results: The result showed that the incidence of EGG PVES presented good positive correlation with auditory-perceptual evaluation (r = 0.703, P＜0.000). Statistical analysis revealed a significant difference in mean PVES amplitude among different groups (P＜0.05). There was a significant distinction in the time interval between groups A and B, as well as in groups A and C (P＜0.05)., Conclusions: The study suggests PVES can be an objective means of identifying GS in cleft palate speech. It also indicates that proportion of amplitude and time interval of PVES tend to be positively correlate with subjective assessment., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)