Re: USAGE: Glottal stop for /t/ (was Re: 2nd person pronoun for god)

 --- Barbara Barrett <barbarabarrett@...>
wrote: > > Jake Jotted;
> > I lived for a while in Brooklyn NY, and I've
> recently wondered about that.
> > Who was the first to say ['bV,?Er] for /bVtEr/ (or
> is it [bV?@r] and
> > /bVt@r/ ). Come to think of it, in Brooklyn they'd
> probably say ['bV,?@] . I
> > think it's not aspirated when I hear it here. Do
> other people's dialects
> > also have ? as cophonemic with t?
>
> Barbara Babbles;
> In the UK the most notable dialects that use the
> glottal stop
> (unaspirated) as a replacement for medial and final
> 't's are Scots
> (particularly Glaswegian) London, and Thames Valley.
>
> Except for Thames Valley (which is a fairly recent
> dialect) Wells'
> "Accents of English" covers glottal stop using
> dialects reasonably well
> IIRCC. Thames Valley is described in The Cambridge
> Encyclopedia of the
> English Language. The interesting thing (to me) is
> that in all UK
> dialects with the exception of Thames Valley the use
> of the glottal stop
> is associated with the working class and low
> education levels. Thames
> Valley however is an upper class accent (the younger
> Royal Princes speak
> it) and in it the glottal stop is only used to
> replace t-final when the
> vowel before it is a back vowel. Thames Valley is
> emerging as the
> relacement for the now dying RP dialect but retains
> the U/Non-U
> differences (these are also described in the
> Cambridge Encyclopedia).
i would say the Thames Valley English you describe and
the ( Thames ) Estuary English are opposite ends of
the same continuum. estuary covers everything from my
own rp-with-quite-a-bit-of-london accent* to the
really very harsh accents of north kent ( commonest
vowel /&~/ )

* as i've mentioned before, i say [fA@] rather than
[faI@], [pO:] rather than [pO@], [bI:] rather than
[bI@] and make a distinction between wholly [hOUli:]
and holy [h@Uli:] as against rp [h@UlI] for both (
notice also the final vowel )

at the same time i say [tEIk] for 'take', rather than
[tVIk], which is more east london, and which creeps
into some forms of estuary ( i may border on [t&Ik]
but never any lower ) and i only usually vocalise my
/L\/s (SAMPA?) in certain positions ( 'myself' often
comes out [mAI'sEUf] whilst 'sell' is [sEL\]

anyway, for a more authoritative description see
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/home.htm.

bn

=====
bnathyuw | landan | arR
stamp the sunshine out | angelfish
your tears came like anaesthesia | phèdre

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