Phonetic differences in glottalic consonants

Abstract

Data on glottalic consonants in a number of languages were examined. Data on implosives come from Hausa, Degema, and three Eastern Ijo languages, all spoken in Nigeria. Ejective data come from Hausa and Navaho. The implosives in Degema and the Ijo languages show a strong positive correlation (r = 0.9; p = 0.025) between the closure duration and the intensity of implosion. However, Hausa implosives do not follow this correlation in that they have a high intensity implosion with a relatively brief closure duration. This is attributed to the fact that Hausa implosives are also laryngealized, and the resulting lower airflow into the vocal tract makes it possible to have a more efficient implosion in Hausa. Due to the different phonation type the implosive mechanism is thus considerably different in Hausa than in the other languages. The ejectives in Hausa and Navaho differed along several parameters: total duration, ratio closure duration/open interval, and phonation type in the vowel onset. Thus what appears to be the same sound nevertheless has to be described in different ways for different languages. [This work was supported by NSF.]