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Occurrence of glottal stops in fluent speech
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|July 1, 1978
Summary
Glottal stops in American English speech are not well-studied boundary markers. Speaker style and material difficulty significantly influence their use more than linguistic factors.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Phonetics
- Speech Science
Background:
- Glottal stops are often anecdotally considered speech boundary markers.
- Their role in continuous American English speech remains under-researched.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the factors influencing the production of glottal stops in American English.
- To determine whether linguistic or higher-level factors are more influential.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of five speakers reading four stories in list and story formats.
- Data analyzed based on speaker, material, version, phonological, and grammatical variables.
Main Results:
- Speaker's reading style significantly impacts glottal stop usage.
- Material difficulty also shows a strong influence on glottal stop production.
- Phonological and grammatical factors had less influence than higher-level variables.
Conclusions:
- Speaker and material factors are more critical in glottal stop realization than phonological or grammatical ones.
- This challenges the sole focus on linguistic elements when studying speech phenomena.