[t]→[ʔ]Certainty: 5/5Commonality: 5/5

Voiceless alveolar plosive to Glottal stop

T-glottalization is one of the most widespread features of modern English dialects, where the alveolar stop [t] is replaced by a glottal stop [ʔ] in specific phonological environments.

Phonetic Effects

Debuccalization, Lenition, Glottalization

Language Examples

Cockney English Germanic

butter [ˈbʌtə]→[ˈbʌʔə]— Classic intervocalic glottalization of /t/.

American English Germanic

button [ˈbʌtən]→[ˈbʌʔn̩]— Glottalization before a syllabic nasal.

Yucatec Maya Mayan

glottalized /tʼ/ in coda position→[ʔ]— In Yucatec Maya, glottalized stops /pʼ tʼ kʼ/ followed by an identical consonant optionally debuccalize to [ʔ], losing their oral place of articulation. The ejective quality is retained as a pure glottal closure.

word-final [t] at prosodic boundary→[h] or [ʔ]— Word-final stop debuccalization /T/→[h] at phrase boundaries is well-documented in Yucatec. Final oral stops weaken to laryngeal segments in coda position across all places of articulation.

Related Transformations

Re-buccalization Spirantization

More Germanic Shifts

[a] → [ã] — Assimilatory Nasalization [a] → [∅] — Elision [a] → [ʔ] — Glottalization [a] → [ə] — Vowel Reduction [æ] → [ɛ] — Vowel Raising

Sources & References

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