Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice. Glottalization of obstruent consonants usually involves complete closure of the glottis; another way to describe this phenomenon is to say that a glottal stop is made simultaneously with another consonant. In certain cases, the glottal stop can even wholly replace the voiceless consonant. The term 'glottalized' is also used for ejective and implosive consonants; see glottalic consonant for examples. There are two other ways to represent glottalization of sonorants in the IPA: the same way as ejectives, with an apostrophe; or with the under-tilde for creaky voice. For example, the Yapese word for "sick" with a glottalized m could be transcribed as either or.
Types
Glottalization varies along three parameters, all of which are continuums. The degree of glottalization varies from none through stiff voice and creaky voice to full glottal closure. The timing also varies, from a simultaneous single segment to an onset or coda such as or to a sequence such as or. Full or partial closure of the glottis also allows glottalic airstream mechanisms to operate, producing ejective or implosive consonants; implosives may themselves have modal, stiff, or creaky voice. It is not always clear from linguistic descriptions if a language has a series of light ejectives or voiceless consonants with glottal reinforcement, or similarly if it has a series of light implosives or voiced consonants with glottal reinforcement. The airstream parameter is only known to be relevant to obstruents, but the first two are involved with both obstruents and sonorants, including vowels.
Glottal replacement
When a phoneme is completelysubstituted by a glottal stop, one speaks of glottaling or glottal replacement. This is, for instance, very common in British English dialects such as Cockney, Estuary English, and the various Northern English dialects. In these dialects, the glottal stop is an allophone of, and word-finally, and when followed by an unstressed vowel in a post-stress syllable. 'Water' can be pronounced – the glottal stop has superseded the 't' sound. Other examples include "city", "bottle", "Britain", "seniority". In some consonant clusters, glottal replacement of /t/ is common even among RPspeakers. Glottal replacement also occurs in Indonesian, where syllable final is produced as a glottal stop. In Hawaiian, the glottal stop is reconstructed to have come from other Proto-Polynesian consonants. The following table displays the shift → as well as the shift →.
Gloss
man
sea
taboo
octopus
canoe
Tongan
Samoan
Māori
Rapanui
Rarotongan
Hawaiian
Glottal replacement is not purely a feature of consonants. Yanesha' has three vowel qualities that have phonemic contrasts between short, long, and "laryngeal" or glottalized forms. While the latter generally consists of creaky phonation, there is some allophony involved. In pre-final contexts, a variation occurs ranging from creaky phonation throughout the vowel to a sequence of a vowel, glottal stop, and a slightly rearticulated vowel: →.
Glottal reinforcement
When a phoneme is accompanied by a, then one speaks of pre-glottalization or glottal reinforcement.
This is common in some varieties of English, RP included; and are the most affected but and also regularly show pre-glottalization. In the English dialects exhibiting pre-glottalization, the consonants in question are usually glottalized in the coda position: "what", "fiction", "milkman", "opera". To a certain extent, some varieties of English have free variation between glottal replacement and glottal reinforcement.
Other languages
Glottal reinforcement may occasionally be observed in more conservative varieties of Tweants, a dialect of the Dutch Low Saxon language group. It almost exclusively concerns the consonant, and is sometimes orthographically represented by a double -t. It mostly occurs in monosyllabic verbs, such as "iej loatt" and "wie weett". Sometimes it may also occur in contracted words, such as in the phrase: "Wo geet t?", which is pronounced.
