Re: Glottal stops (was: B. Cthia and Nom) Saul Epstein Tue, 22 Apr 1997 17:37:34 -0500 In light of my statements regarding the apostraphe and glottal stops, I just noticed the following very interesting statements in the ZC: ' - glottal catch; this serves also as syllable-boundary. Thus e,g. the word t'hyla "friend etc" is pronounced so that there is a strong onset [t] followed by offset overshort pause with glottal catch ['], with main dynamic accent on the first vowel of the diphthong, hence [t+'haila]/ Consonent clusters are not avoided; on the contrary, clusters of two consonants are frequent kroy (stop), Katra, plak (blood), t'kahr (teacher), T'Pring, etc. Attention should be paid to the fact that consonant ( and vowel) sequences with ' are NOT to be intepreted as consonant clusters (vowel diphthongs): t'hyla, t'kahr, Kahs'wan, ka'athyra. (Pronounced [Kat' athaira] with very brief pause between the two vowels a, and with stresses distributed like `' i,e. secondary stress on [Ka] and primary stress on [tha]. So now I'M confused. ' is called not a stop but a "catch," and is said to function just I was so careful to say it shouldn't: as a pause rather than as a sound unto itself. The clusters in the examples of clusters are apparently kr, tr, pl, hr, and pr, rather than kr, tr, pl, tk, and tpr, because ' is specifically said to act as a syllabic boundary between consonants. This is very weird, but it is consistent with the pronunciation we get on screen, particularly all the names like [t^pau], [t^pring], [t^lar]. This being the case, it may be that glottal stops are not phonemic to Vulcan either, but that there is a phoneme /'/ which after a consonant is expressed as a mid-central vowel, [^], and between vowels as a glottal stop, [?]. I'm not sure what to do with it between a vowel and a consonant, as in a'Tha... -- from Saul R. Epstein Terran, Late 20th-Early 21st Century liberty uit net www johnco cc ks us sepstein posse circumuertutus libertas satis est