Re: Glottal Stops and word-initial vowels

Roger Mills wrote at 2004-01-11 01:37:27 (-0500)
 > Daniel D. Hicken wrote:
 >
 > > Is it a given that word initial vowels cause humans to use a glottal stop
 > > such as in /?{p@l/ apple, or /?{lo/ French 'Allo'  Or is it more
 > > frequently found that there are not?
 >
 > >From my limited experience:  Germanic langs. yes, though not necessarily in
 > English**; Romance langs. no (except for French hache aspirée just
 > mentioned), they elide their vowels.  Indonesian and most of its relatives
 > yes, eliding vowels is a no-no.  Hawaiian and some other Oceanic langs. have
 > contrastive 0 vs ? initial, which IMO must be very hard to hear (the ? in
 > those cases is < *k).
 >

Yesterday I got a copy of Elbert & Pukui's _Hawaiian Grammar_.*

 | In Hawiian the glottal stop is a consonant, the second most common in
 | the language.  It distinguishes such pairs as:
 |
 | ala `road, awake'    'ala `fragrant'
 |
   ...
 |
 | It differs from other consonants in two ways:
 |   (1) It is always heard before utterance-initial a, e, and i, but
 | this is not considered significant because its occurrence in this
 | position is predictable.  A Hawaiian greets a friend "_'Aloha_," but if
 | he uses this word within a sentence, the glottal stop is no longer
 | heard: _ua aloha_ `[he] did [or does] have compassion'.  Since the
 | glottal does not occur in this word within a sentence, it is entered
 | in the Dictionary _aloha_, and is so written in the present grammar.
 |   (2) Words borrowed from English that begin with vowels a, e, i, o,
 | and sometimes u are pronounced in Hawaiian with initial glottal stops,
 | as _'Alapaki_ `Albert', _'elepani_ `elephant', _'Inia_ `India', and
 | _'okomopila_ `Automobile'.  The initial glottal is written in these
 | words in the present grammar.

* Found in a London 2nd-hand-bookshop.  I found a lot of other
  linguistic materials too, which I wish I could have afforded - a
  beginning Tagalog textbook and a Zulu dictionary in particular.
  And a copy of _The Navajo Language: A Grammar and Colloquial
  Dictionary_ by Young and Morgan, but that would have taken all my
  money and weighed as much as the groceries I ultimately bought.