[ʈ]→[ʔ]Certainty: 5/5Commonality: 2/5

Debuccalization Lenition Sino-Tibetan Austronesian

Voiceless retroflex stop to Glottal stop

The shift from a retroflex stop [ʈ] to a glottal stop [ʔ] is a severe form of debuccalization. It typically occurs in syllable-coda positions when a language's phonology simplifies toward an open-syllable structure, or as a strategy to reduce complex articulatory gestures like retroflexion.

Phonetic Effects

Debuccalization, Coda Reduction, Lenition

Language Examples

Burmese Sino-Tibetan

historical *-ʈ / *-t→[ʔ]— Historical stops in coda positions have systematically debuccalized into glottal stops.

Gorontalic Languages Austronesian

historical *k / *ʈ→[ʔ]— Widespread historical debuccalization of stop consonants across several Sulawesi languages.

Related Transformations

Reverse

More Lenition Shifts

[a] → [∅] — Elision [b] → [p] — Voice Loss [b] → [v] — Spirantization [tɕ] → [ʃ] — De-affrication [tɕ] → [ɕ] — Lenition

Sources & References

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