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In:The Documentarist Turn: From observable linguistic behaviour to typological generalizations
Edited by Sonja Riesberg, Uta Reinöhl and Birgit Hellwig
[Studies in Language Companion Series 240] 2026
► pp. 464–486

Chapter 18
Prosodic effects on glottal stop realization and voice quality variation in a corpus study of Tahitian

ORCiD logo with link | University of Melbourne
ORCiD logo with link | University of Melbourne
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
Languages with “simple” phonological inventories are often neglected in traditional descriptive phonetic research in favour of those with more varied segmental and prosodic features. Tahitian (Eastern Polynesian) is a prime example with no experimental phonetic investigation of the language in spite of a relatively long history of language documentation. This chapter explores the interaction between prosody (stress, phrasing), glottal stop variation and vowel glottalization. Phonemic glottal stops in many languages of the world have a range of variants, from fully occluded voiceless glottal stops to creaky voiced vowels. Tahitian is no exception but there is a relatively complex relationship between glottal variation and prosodic function (i.e. prominence and phrasing), suggesting that languages with “simple” phonological systems illustrate phonetic complexity.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Background on Tahitian
    • 1.2Glottal stop variation and prosodic structure
  • 2.Glottal stop variation and vowel glottalization in Tahitian
    • 2.1Distribution of glottal variants
    • 2.2Acoustic duration of /ʔ/ and glottal variants
    • 2.3Voice quality measures of /ʔ/ and neighbouring vowels
  • 3.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
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