Re: the null phoneme

--- In phoNet@yahoogroups.com, "Jean-Paul G. POTET" <potetjp@w...>
wrote:

> "I was explicitly instructed by my RP pronunciation teachers to

avoid the

> glottal stop in such cases. Let's hear the opinion of our native
> English-speakers (the avoidance of [?] may well be a dialectal

phenomenon)."

> Piotr GASIOROWSKI, POLAND
>
> "For my dialect (Australian), glottal stops are inserted after a
> pause/beginning of an utterance(?) or before a word with particular
> emphasis.* After a pure vowels (incl. air, ear; excl. he, who, hay,

hoe), a

> [r\] is inserted before a vowel. After a diphthong, a homorganic

glide is

> inserted before a vowel. A consonant before a vowel might be

ambisyllabic."

> Tristan McLEAY, AUSTRALIA
>
> The glottal stop doesn't exist in French.
> I was taught to produce the glottal stop in London by a native

English

> teacher at the onset of syllables like <ear> etc. execpt when a

liaoson was

> possible.
>
> Later I found a book written by another native English teacher

stating that

> this was characteristic of German learners of English!
>
> I think the best would be to consider that there is a light glottal

stop and

> a heavy glottal stop.
>
> The light glottal stop whenever a liaison is feasible. It is found

at the

> syllabic initial of
> Eng. <ear> > <an ear>
> Tagalog [?a: nim] <ánim> "six" > [la 'biN '?a: nim] <labíng ánim> >

[la bi

> 'Na: nim] <labingánim> "sixteen"
> and the word initial of
> Arabic [?ism] "name" > [ma: smu ka] > [ma: sm@ k] "What's your

name?"

>
> The heavy glottal stop does not exist in English. It exists in

Arabic and

> Tagalog.
> In Arabic it is solid in the initial and final position.
> [?ahl] "tribe, people"
> [sama:?] "sky"
> The medial ones disappear in spoken Arabics, and this elision

entails the

> lengthening of the vowel.
> classical Arabic [bi?r] > modern Arabic [bi:r] "(water) well"
>
> In Tagalog the heavy glottal stop only occurs in the word final

position.

> [baN 'ka?] <bangkâ> "canoe"
> It is generally elided within a group, and a compensatory

lengthening of the

> vowel takes place.
> <Hindî pô iyán.> [hin di: pu: 'ján] "That's not it."
>
> I think Siamese is like Tagalog: it has the light glottal stop in

the

> initial syllabic position, and the heavy glottal stop in the word

final

> position.
> [?ok (low t.)] "chest"
> [lE? (high t.)] "and"

I would say heavy initially, and light finally. The final glottal
stop seems to be a way of meeting the constraint that a word cannot
end in a short vowel. It is normally dropped, without lengthening,
in the non-final syllables of polysyllabic words, even when tone
neutralisation is suppressed.

I am not sure that the dropping of the final glottal stop with
compensatory lengthening in monosyllabic words is a standard feature
of Siamese - I suspect it is a dialect feature. Such words do not
seem to derive from Proto-Tai. Indeed, final glottal stops
contrasting with other plosives do not seem to be a very widespread
feature in the Tai dialects. What do you base your suggestions on?
Apart from Siamese, I am only aware of them as reflexes of final /k/.

> I read somewhere that Arab grammarians did make this distinction

between the

> light / elidable glottal stop and the heavy / un-alidable one.
>
> Jean-Paul G. POTET, FRANCE