Final Consonants and Glottalization: New Perspectives from Hanoi Vietnamese

Abstract

The evolution from final obstruents to final glottal stop and then to rhymeglottalization (i.e. from /at/ to /aʔ/, then to /aˀ/) is a well-established general trendin the history of the Sino-Tibetan language family and beyond. It has further beenshown by laryngoscopy that in three languages which retain the nonreleasedsyllable-final obstruents /p/, /t/ and /k/ (Standard Thai, and two Chinese dialects),these obstruents are often accompanied by a glottal stop. The present researchraises the issue whether there is another typological possibility: can nonreleasedfinal obstruents be accompanied consistently by modal phonation, without glottalstop? Analysis of electroglottographic recordings of 126 syllables in two carriersentences spoken by 4 speakers shows that, in Hanoi Vietnamese, the final obstruents/p/, /t/ and /k/ are not accompanied by glottalization, and that the open quotientincreases in the course of the syllable rhyme. Obstruent-final rhymes (whichmay carry either of two tones: D1 or D2) are compared with nasal-final rhymeswhich, under one of the tones (tone B2), are confirmed to be glottalized. Our findingis that tones D1 and D2 (i.e. obstruent-final rhymes) are both produced inmodal voice, which shows that the typological paradigm of observed realizationsof syllable-final obstruents must be enlarged. The discussion puts forward thehypothesis that the unusual association of segments and voice quality found inHanoi Vietnamese is a strategy to maintain the opposition between B2-tone andD2-tone rhymes.