Prevocalic t-glottaling across word boundaries in Midland American English

Abstract

Rates of t-glottaling across word boundaries in both preconsonantal and prevocalic contexts have recently been claimed to be positively correlated with the frequency of occurrence of a given word in preconsonantal contexts (Eddington & Channer, 2010). Words typically followed by consonants have been argued to have their final /t/s glottaled more often than words less frequently followed by consonants. This paper includes a number of 'internal' and 'external' predictors in a mixed-effects logistic regression model and has two goals: (1) to replicate the positive correlation of the frequency of occurrence of a word in preconsonantal contexts (its 'contextual frequency') with its rates of t-glottaling in both preconsonantal and prevocalic contexts postulated by Eddington and Channer (2010), and (2) to quantify the factors influencing the likelihood of t-glottaling across word boundaries in Midland American English. The effect of contextual frequency has been confirmed. This result is argued to support a hybrid view of phonological storage and processing, one including both abstract and exemplar representations. T-glottaling has also been found to be negatively correlated with bigram frequency and speech rate deviation, while positively correlated with young age in female speakers.

Physical and phonological causes of coda /t/ glottalization in the mainstream American English of central Ohio

“…In other dialects of English, coda glottalization (and voiceless stop glottalization more generally) is more clearly associated with particular social groups. The age and gender differences found in the corpus (Eddington & Channer, 2010;Eddington & Taylor, 2009;Kaźmierski, 2020;Roberts, 2006; and Section 3.5), as well as two proposals that voiceless coda glottalization may reflect a mainstream American identity (Levon, 2006;Roberts, 2006), point towards future work on the sociolinguistic use of voiceless coda glottalization in American English.…”

“…American English voiceless stops in syllable codas are sometimes pronounced with audible glottal constriction (Bellavance, 2017;Cohn, 1993;Eddington & Channer, 2010;Eddington & Taylor, 2009;Huffman, 2005;Kahn, 1976;Kaźmierski, 2018Kaźmierski, , 2020Kaźmierski, Wojtkowiak, & Baumann, 2016;Kilbourn-Ceron, 2017;Kilbourn-Ceron, Clayards, & Wagner, 2020;Levon, 2006;Pierrehumbert, 1994Pierrehumbert, , 1995Redi & Shattuck-Hufnagel, 2001; Roberts, 2006). For example, the word 'bat' may be pronounced as [baet], [baet], [baeʔt], or [baeʔ].…”

“…American English coda glottalization is also attested in word-final position before vowels, though at much lower rates than before consonants (Eddington & Channer, 2010;Eddington & Taylor, 2009;Kaźmierski, 2018Kaźmierski, , 2020Kaźmierski et al, 2016;Kilbourn-Ceron, 2017;Kilbourn-Ceron et al, 2020;Roberts, 2006;Umeda, 1978). While prevocalic position does not necessarily favor /t/ reduction, glottal stops are often produced before vowel-initial words, especially at phrase junctures and in stressed syllables (Dilley et al, 1996;Garellek, 2013;Pierrehumbert & Talkin, 1991;Umeda, 1978).…”

“…This prediction is supported by the findings in Kilbourn-Ceron et al (2020): Prevocalic coda /t/ glottalization is more likely when the word is lengthened (cf. speech rate in Kaźmierski, 2020), when it is followed by a short pause, or when the following word is relatively unpredictable. All of these are strong correlates of phrase junctures (e.g., Turk, 2010, Section 2.4.1), and Eddington and Channer (2010) further find that prevocalic coda /t/ glottalization is more likely before stressed syllables.…”

“…All of these are strong correlates of phrase junctures (e.g., Turk, 2010, Section 2.4.1), and Eddington and Channer (2010) further find that prevocalic coda /t/ glottalization is more likely before stressed syllables. Eddington and Channer (2010) and Kaźmierski (2020) also propose that coda glottalization may be phonologically generalized from pre-consonantal environments (e.g., pre-sonorant) to prevocalic ones, as word-final /t/ occurs most often before consonants.…”