Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the

glottis The glottis is the opening between the vocal folds (the rima glottidis). The glottis is crucial in producing vowels and voiced consonants. Etymology From Ancient Greek ''γλωττίς'' (glōttís), derived from ''γλῶττα'' (glôtta), va ...

during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other

sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are ...

s is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of

obstruent An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as ...

consonants usually involves complete closure of the

; another way to describe this phenomenon is to say that a

glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...

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 In phonetics, a glottalic consonant is a consonant produced with some important contribution (movement or closure) of the glottis. Glottalic sounds may involve motion of the larynx upward or downward, as the initiator of an egressive or ingre ...

for examples. There are two other ways to represent glottalization of sonorants in the

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...

: (a) the same way as

ejectives In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some l ...

, with an apostrophe; or (b) with the under-tilde for creaky voice. For example, the Yapese word for "sick" with a glottalized ''m'' could be transcribed as either or . (In some typefaces, the apostrophe will occur above the m.)

Types

Glottalization varies along three parameters, all of which are continuums. The ''degree'' of glottalization varies from none ( modal voice, ) through

stiff voice The term stiff voice describes the pronunciation of consonants or vowels with a glottal opening narrower, and the vocal folds stiffer, than occurs in modal voice. Although there is no specific IPA diacritic for stiff voice, the voicing diacritic (a ...

() and creaky voice () to full glottal closure (glottal reinforcement or glottal replacement, described below). 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,See Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996:74) for the case of Siona 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 completely substituted by a glottal stop , one speaks of glottaling or glottal replacement. This is, for instance, very common in British English dialects such as Cockney and Estuary English dialects. In these dialects, the glottal stop is an allophone of , and word-finally, and when followed by an unstressed vowel (including syllabic and ) 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 RP speakers.

Geordie Geordie () is a nickname for a person from the Tyneside area of North East England, and the dialect used by its inhabitants, also known in linguistics as Tyneside English or Newcastle English. There are different definitions of what constitut ...

English has a unique form of glottalization involving glottal replacement of t, k, and p, for example in "metro", "thank you", and "people". Glottal replacement also occurs in

Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesian ...

, where syllable final is produced as a glottal stop. In Hawaiian, the

is reconstructed to have come from other

Proto-Polynesian Proto-Polynesian (abbreviated PPn) is the hypothetical proto-language from which all the modern Polynesian languages descend. It is a daughter language of the Proto-Austronesian language. Historical linguists have reconstructed the language using ...

consonants. The following table displays the shift → as well as the shift → . Glottal replacement is not purely a feature of consonants. Yanesha' has three vowel qualities (, , and ) that have phonemic contrasts between short, long, and "laryngeal" or glottalized forms. While the latter generally consists of

creaky {{Short pages monitor