Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

glottalization as a consequence of lowering subglottal pressure and gradual vocal cord
abduction at the end of the prosodic domain. It would make perfect sense, however, if the
glottalization in question on these final vowels were actually true glottalization, the tight
glottal adduction and tense laryngeal musculature generally described for distinctive
creaky voice or glottal stop.
Here as with devoicing, the solution to the quandary is in the nature of
phonologization. In its embryonic form, phrase-final glottalization is a phonetically-
contingent gradient effect, dependent entirely on the convergence of the laryngeal and
alveolar states listed above. Glottalization is not an independently targeted feature of the
articulation. The acoustic features produced by the irregular pulsing of the glottis this
“automatic glottalization” causes, however, are extremely similar to those associated with
true creaky phonation or glottalization (i.e. irregular pulsing, relative F0 lowering, lower
amplitude, and characteristic spectral tilt 96 ,). If gradient glottalization becomes regular
and salient enough then on final syllables, the possibility for its reinterpretation by the
listener as intended or targeted rather than contingent becomes quite real. As a
consequence of this reinterpretation, glottalization becomes extrinsic, independently
96
Though creaky voice can of course be produced with higher amplitude (unlike phrase-final irregular
phonation presumably), it has been shown that glottalization can actually be cued in some languages that
employ it contrastively with lower relative amplitude alone (Baker and Gerfen 2001). The lowered
amplitude of the phrase-final syllables could actually increase the likelihood of reanalysis then. Though as
noted above higher F0 may enhance creakiness, the direct effect of the irregular pulsing with longer closed
periods in the glottal cycle is an F0 drop relative to neighboring modal-voiced segments.
220