Glottal stop

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This article is about the sound. For the letter, see glottal stop (letter).

IPA – number	113
IPA – text	ʔ
IPA – image
Entity	ʔ
X-SAMPA	?
Kirshenbaum	?
Sound sample (help·info)

The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʔ. The glottal stop is the sound made when the vocal cords are pressed together to stop the flow of air and then released; for example, the break separating the syllables of the interjection uh-oh. While this segment is not a phoneme in English, it is present in nearly all dialects of English as an allophone of /t/. Some foreign language learning texts (e.g. Arabic) spend considerable space explaining this sound (in non-technical terms) to English speakers, although most English speakers make this consonant easily and daily.

In the traditional Romanization of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with an apostrophe, <’>, and this is the source of the IPA letter <ʔ>. In many Polynesian languages which use the Latin alphabet, however, the glottal stop is written with a reversed apostrophe, <‘> (called ‘okina in Hawaiian), which, confusingly, is also used to transcribe the ayin Arabic and is the source of the IPA character for the voiced pharyngeal fricative <ʕ>.

In graphic representation the glottal stop is hard to generalize for the orthographies of most Philippine languages. In most cases, however, a word that begins with a vowel (e.g. Tagalog aso 'dog') is always pronounced with a glottal stop in the beginning. Some orthographies employ a hyphen, instead of the reverse apostrophe, if the glottal stop occurs in the middle of the word (e.g. Tagalog pag-ibig 'love'). And when it occurs in the end of a word, the last vowel is written with a circumflex accent (if the accent is on the last syllable) or a grave accent (if the accent occurs at the penultimate syllable).

Contents 1 Features 2 Occurrence 3 See also 4 References 5 Bibliography

[edit] Features

Features of the glottal stop:

• Its manner of articulation is plosive or stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.
• Its place of articulation is glottal which means it is articulated by the vocal folds.
• Its phonation type is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• Because it is pronounced in the throat; without a component in the mouth, the central/lateral dichotomy does not apply.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

[edit] Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Abkhaz		аи	[ʔaj]	'no'	See Abkhaz phonology
Arabic	Standard[1]	الله	[ʔɑlˤˈlˤɑːh]	'God, 'Allah'	See Arabic phonology
	Metropolitan dialects[2]	شقة	[ʃæʔɐː]	'apartment'	Corresponds to /q/ in Standard Arabic.
Bikol		ba-go	[ˈbaːʔgo]	'new'
Burmese		မ္ရစ္‌မ္ယား	[mjiʔ mjà]	'rivers'
Cebuano		bag-o	[ˈbaːgʔo]	'new'
Chamorro		halu'u	[həluʔu]	'shark'
Chechen		йоI / yoj	[yoʔ]	'girl'
Czech		používat	[poʔuʒiːvat]	'to use'	See Czech phonology
Danish		hånd	[hɞnʔ]	'hand'	See Danish phonology
Dutch[3]		beamen	[bəʔamə]	'to confirm'	See Dutch phonology
English	Cockney[4]	cat	[kʰɛ̝ʔ]	'cat'	Allophone of /t/. See glottalization and English phonology
	GA		[kʰæʔt]
	RP[5]	button	[b̥ɐʔn̩]	'button'
Finnish		linja-auto	[ˈlinjɑʔˈɑuto]	'bus'	See Finnish phonology
German	northern dialects	Beamter	[bəˈʔamtɐ]	'civil servant'	See German phonology
Guaraní		avañe’ẽ	[aʋaɲẽˈʔẽ]	'Guaraní'	Occurs only between vowels
Hawaiian		ʻeleʻele	[ˈʔɛlɛˈʔɛlɛ]	'black'	See Hawaiian phonology
Hebrew		מאמר	[maʔamaʁ]	'article'	See Hebrew phonology
Indonesian		bakso	[ˌbaʔˈso]	'meatball'	Allophone of /k/ or /g/ in the syllable coda
Kabardian		Iэ	[ʔɛ]	'to tell'
Maltese		qattus	[ˈʔattus]	'cat'
Persian		معني	[maʔni]	'meaning'	See Persian phonology
Pirahã		baíxi	[màíʔì]	'parent'
Rotuman[6]		ʻusu	[ʔusu]	'to box'
Seri		he	[ʔɛ]	'I'
Tagalog		iihi	[ˌʔiːˈʔiːhɛʔ]	'will urinate'
Tahitian		puaʻa	[puaʔa]	'pig'
Tongan		tuʻu	[tuʔu]	'stand'
Vietnamese		a	[ʔaʔ]	'by the way'	See Vietnamese phonology
Võro		piniq	[ˈpinʲiʔ]	'dogs'
Welayta		[ʔirʈa]		'wet'

[edit] See also

• List of phonetics topics
• Stød

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Blevins, Juliette (1994), "The Bimoraic Foot in Rotuman Phonology and Morphology", Oceanic Linguistics 33(2): 491-516
• Gussenhoven, Carlos (1992), "Dutch", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (2): 45-47
• Roach, Peter (2004), "British English: Received Pronunciation", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (2): 239-245
• Schane, Sanford A (1968), French Phonology and Morphology, M.I.T. Press
• Sivertsen, Eva (1960), written at Oslo, Cockney Phonology, University of Oslo
• Thelwall, Robin (1990), "Illustrations of the IPA: Arabic", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 20 (2): 37-41
• Watson, Janet (2002), written at New York, The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic, Oxford University Press

Consonants (List, table)	See also: IPA, Vowels
Pulmonics Bila​bial Labio​dental Den​tal Alve​olar Post-​alve​olar Retro​flex Pal​a​tal Ve​lar Uvu​lar Pha​ryn​geal Epi​glot​tal Glot​tal Non-pulmonics and other symbols Nasals m ɱ n̪ n ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ Clicks  ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ Plosives p b p̪ b̪ t̪ d̪ t d ʈ ɖ c ɟ k ɡ q ɢ ʡ ʔ Implo­­sives  ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ Fricatives  ɸ β f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ ʂ ʐ ç ʝ x ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ h ɦ Ejec­­tives  pʼ tʼ kʼ qʼ sʼ Approximants  ʋ ɹ ɻ j ɰ Affricates  t͡s d͡z t͡ʃ d͡ʒ t͡ɕ d͡ʑ t͡ʂ d͡ʐ t͡ɬ d͡ɮ p̪͡f Trills ʙ r • ʀ • Other laterals  ɺ • ɫ Flaps & Taps • ѵ ɾ ɽ • • Co-articulated fricatives  ɕ ʑ ɧ Lat. Fricatives ɬ ɮ • • • Co-articulated approximants  ʍ w ɥ Lat. Appr'mants l ɭ ʎ ʟ Co-articulated stops  k͡p ɡ͡b ŋ͡m
This page contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help] Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant. Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged impossible.