Re: Glottal Stops and word-initial vowels

On Sunday, January 11, 2004, at 06:12 AM, Tristan McLeay wrote:

> On Sat, 10 Jan 2004, 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
>
> You'll find that it's /alo/, I do believe.
You believe correctly, and - what's more - it's pronounced [alo].  There's
no
glottal stop in normal _French_ pronunciation.

> And /&p@l/, for that matter;
> the [?] is non-phonemic (so [?&p@l] is correct, though).
Yep - the initial [?] is certainly non-phonemic and, in some (many?)
English
variants is not phonetic either. I pronounce it [&pl=] with no initial [?]

>> frequently found that there are not?  I'm working on a conlang, and when
>> I go through and pronounce through the words, I find that I'm wanting to
>> put a glottal stop in front of the word-intial vowels when there's no
>> liaison from the preceding word.
>>
>> Comments?
Probably a feature of your dialect of English.  It was, I understand,
fairly common at one time in English and is, e.g. standard practice in
German.

> It's my understanding that since [?] became widespread in some British
> dialects, words beginning with vowels now begin with vowels :)
This understanding is quite correct. In most varieties of colloquial Brit
English (at least as spoken by those of generations younger than mine) [?]
is the way medial and final /t/ is pronounced.  Words that begin with
vowels
do just that: begin with vowels.

To return to the original question - no, it ain't a universal.  In some
natlangs,
there is a _phonemic_ difference between initial glottal stop and a lack
of a
glottal stop, e.d. in Samoan we have:
au /au/ = to reach
'au /?au/ = to send. (<-- an earlier *kau)

Ray
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