I have noticed the same pattern (the glottal stop in words like "Martin" and
"didn't") among the urban African American adolescents I work with in
Pittsburgh. When I spoke to a couple professors in our linguistics
department who research US language variation about it, they suggested
possible links to pronunciation patterns found in west coast hip-hop music -
supposedly there is some research on this topic, but I am not familiar with
it.
Amanda

 On 3/23/06 9:35 PM, "Stahlke, Herbert F.W." <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Bill,
> 
> I've noticed this change together with a similar one among young people,
> especially young women.  In /mar?In/, the loss of the /t/ and the insertion of
> the /I/ go hand in hand.  In speakers who keep the /t/ it gets released
> velicly, simply lowering the velum so that it become a nasal.  Voicing is
> roughly simultaneous with this.  The glottal stop is, as you indicate, a
> regular feature of syllable-final fortis stops (/p, t, k/).  If the alveolar
> closure is absent, there's no /t/ and now way of using velic release, so when
> the glottis laxes to permit voicing a vowel occurs.  As for a transcription,
> I'd opt for something central, either a barred-i or a schwa, depending on the
> speaker and on the final nasal.
> 
> This similar pattern I mentioned, and maybe it isn't similar beyond the
> speaker population that uses it, is the use of a full vowel rather than a
> syllabic /n/ or /l/ in words with the suffixes -tion and -al.  The vowel that
> I've heard usually is the inverted <v>.  I think I've heard it more among
> Californians than elsewhere, but at an LSA a few years ago I heard an
> Australian speaker, a young man, use it.  He'd been living in the Bay area for
> about a year.
> 
> Herb
>  
> There is a pronunciation pattern common among some of my students that
> seems rather new to me; I'm bringing it up because I'm curious how
> widespread it is. It basically involves fully converting an unreleased
> /t/ to a glottal stop before a following vowel (using ? to stand for
> glottal stop):
> 
> Martin /mar?tn/ -->  /mar?In/
> 
> Most speakers convert the "t" in "Martin" to a kind of glottal anyway,
> but it's one that's produced with the tip of the tongue in the position
> where a "t" and an "n" are usually said. What some of my students are
> doing is skipping that tongue movement entirely, but adding a full (if
> lax) vowel before the "n". It's similar in some ways to the use of
> glottal stops in stereotypes of Cockney, but not exactly. And, of
> course, my students are Michiganders, not Londoners. Not even Canadian
> Londoners.
> 
> Bill Spruiell
> 
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
>      http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
> 
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
> 
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
>      http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
> 
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/

 
*****
Amanda J. Godley, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
English Education
University of Pittsburgh
412-648-7313
    

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/