Initial Glottal Stops and Not (was: Futurese)

On Mon, 29 Apr 2002 18:49:42 -0400 Javier BF <uaxuctum@...> writes:
> >Otherwise it'd seem you couldn't distinguish, in spoken language,
> between
> >f'rinstance /'a/ and /a/.
> Well, certainly that must be a difficult difference to
> distinguish, since it's very rarely encountered: of all the
> sound systems I'm familiar with--and you can bet they're not
> just two or three--, only in some Polynesian languages do
> they distinguish between /?a/ and /a/. Anywhere else, either
> vowels are forbidden in initial position (think of Arabic)
> or the glottal stop is not considered a phoneme (think of
> German, which automatically places a glottal stop before
> every syllable-initial vowel).
-

Actually, i'm pretty sure that Arabic accepts vowels in initial position.
 That's the difference between initial {alif} and initial {alif-hamza}.
The initial {alif-hamza} represents /?a/, /?i/, /?u/, and their long
counterparts (although /?a:/ has its own unique marker), which are never
elided (for instance [wa?aktubu] "and i write"), while plain initial
{alif} represents /a/, /i/, /u/ which are not preceded by a glottal stop,
and which therefore can get elided, especially the definite marker
{alif-laam} |al|:
/alGurfa(t)/ = 'the room'
/fii alGurfa(t)/ = 'in the room', pronounced [filGurfa(t)]

My conlang Rokbeiglamki also has contrastive intial vowels and
glottal-stops + vowels, but it only really makes a difference in
distinguishing between the conjunction "and" |i| /i/, and the female
prefix |i-| /?i/:
/i mald/  |i mald| = "and a human"
/?i mald/  |i-mald| = "a woman"


-Stephen (Steg)
 "they love you when you're on all the covers,
  when you're not then they love another."
     ~ 'the dope show' by marilyn manson