Re: Word-initial glottal stops (was: Re: Repr. Boreanesian (was:...))

At 11:54 am +0000 11/12/98, James Campbell wrote:
><snip glottal discussion>
>
>Brad Coon eskri"rema":
>
>> Per my accoustic phonetics class at U of Chicago, all vowel initial
>> words in English are actually glottal stop initial.  And so they seem
>> to be in my Northern Indiana dialect.  Sure would like to see a lot
>> more data before I would accept that as an English universal (as in
>> Nik's example).
So would I.  Indeed, considering the widely different parts of the globe
where English is spoken as L1, I'd be quite surprised if this were anything
like an English universal.

In my part of Britain, the south east, the glottal plosive [?] is widely
used, but as an *allophone of medial and final /t/*.  Indeed, this practice
now seems universal among the young (and not so young!).  Although I do not
like the practice - and I admit my prejudice is probably quite unreasonable
- I've grown up with it and have not the slightest problem pronouncing,
e.g. "what" as [wO?].

I do have a problem with _initial_ glottal plosive.  It is sometimes heard
in this part of the world in certain types of slow speech or when someone
who ideolect has no /h/ tries to articulate /h/. But it seems an unusual
phenomenon and to be used irregularly and unpredictably here.

>Aeons ago on the list, someone (possibly Mark or ~mark) mentioned that they
>had two friends with the same vowel-initial name, and that they
>differentiated by pronouncing one's name with a glottal stop and the
>other's without (e.g. /?an@/ vs /an@/).
>
>I still can't do it myself.
>
>James
Nor I.  [&n@] is no problem, but to consistently say [?&n@] would require
quite a bit of practice.

Ray.