Glottal

Glottal stops occur in English, although they are not used to distinguish one word from another. For this reason, they find no place in a phonemic analysis of English except as free variants of other sounds, or as pre-dictable sounds. For instance, if we compare e.g.  and  , these are just different productions of the word ‘ill’.

Phonetically, glottal stops are very common in spoken English. They occur in a number of locations. These are all illustrated in the transcript in (1) below, which is taken from a conservative RP speaker:

1. simultaneously with, or instead of, voiceless alveolar plosives, (‘salt’, line 4; ‘important’, line 5) – glottal reinforcement and glottal replacement respectively;

2. word initially, as markers of phrase beginnings or to mark vowel-initial words which carry stress (‘all’, line 9);

3. as a way to mark repair (‘that is the- …’, line 3);

4. occasionally instead of [ð] word initially (‘that’s’, line 5).