Glottal stop About I live with my father = Bydlím s otcem. What is the pronunciation of the segment _s otcem_ 1. With a glottal stop? 1.1. With a geminate? ['sˀottsem] 1.2. Without a geminate? ['sˀotsem] 2. Without a glottal stop? 2.1. With a geminate? ['sottsem] 2.2. Without a geminate? ['sotsem]
1. With a glottal stop 1.1. With a geminate ['sˀottsem] correct language 1.2. Without a geminate ['sˀotsem] common spoken pronunciation However, spoken language would probably prefer táta or tata (Moravian dialect).
Jana: Again a useful answer. Thanks a lot, Jana. I don't doubt táta / tata "daddy" is more common, but with it I can't examine the two problems involved in the segment with s otcem. From your answer I draw two conclusions. a) Czech has post-glottalized phones, e.g. [sˀ] as above. This is particularly precious for I don't think this sort of feature is very common. b) When there is the geminate [tt] resulting from /t/ + /ts/, the geminate may be either maintained of reduced to its singleton [t]. I suppose there are similar results with other consonants.
Actually, the reduction is /ts/. The reduction is perfectly evident in an example of Slovak (our brother language) where otec (father) transforms into oco, ocko, ocinko (daddy); the orthography follows here the pronunciation. Similar reduction can be heard in the combination d+c (dts); e.g. rádce (adviser), hádka (quarrel, locative v hádce).
Jana: You are a very good guide, Jana. Thanks a lot. I suppose that in rádce "adviser" the /d/ is devoiced because it follows /ts/ that is unvoiced hence *['ra:dtse] > ['ra:ttse] > ['ra:tse].
why do you consider the 's' a post-glottalized phone rather than the 'o' of 'otec' a pre-glottalized phone? this makes more sense to me. am i being linguistically naiive? is the 's' followed by a glottal stop even when it precedes a consonant? if you're interested in distinctly POST-glottalized phones, the cockney dialect of english is a prime example: word-final 't' has been replaced by a glottal stop so that standard english [that] is pronounced [thaˀ]. i guess it's easier to find post-glottalized vowels than consonants though...
Justin: At first sight both interpretations are correct. Now, 1) as the /s/ cannot be pronounced alone, 2) as it is not a post-clitic that sticks to the final of the preceding word, but a pre-clitic that sticks to the initial of the following word, 3) and as the glottal stop is not erased after the /s/ I came to the conclusion that the result is a post-glottalized : [sˀ]. In other words, you obtain a phonetic word whose initial is [sˀ]. I suppose the same can be said about prepositions reduced to a consonant followed by a word beginning with a vowel. This is a remarkable phonetic (not phonemic) feature of Czech. I use the expression "post-glottalized" because many linguists do not treat the glottal stop as a full-fledged consonant. Actually [sˀ] is comparable to [sl] , [st], etc. It is just a consonant followed by another consonant. Yes I know the glottal stop very well: I had to master it when I studied Arabic where it is a phoneme. I also know that funny Cockney pronunciation of /t/, e.g. waiter > wai'er. :lol: By the way, I'm afraid, in this pronunciation you do not obtain post-glottalized phones, but a vowel followed by the consonant [ˀ].
To Justin: Definitely - the same also happens with other prepositions formed by a consonant, i.e. k, v, z and prepositions ending with a consonant, e.g. bez, od, přes, nad, used with nouns beginning with a consonant or a combination of two and more of them. The tendency of simplification which occurs in every language is manifested here by common use of an added vowel -e; ke, ve, ze, beze, ode, přese, nade. Some examples - ke škodě, ve vodě (in cases of double occurrence of the same consonant, i.e. the preposition and the beginning of the following noun, it is the only solution, as a glottal stop would not make the pronuniciation any easier), ze školy, beze mne, ode všeho, nade mlejnem. Quite often, these prepositions joined the following noun, forming adjectives or adverbs- bezejmenný, odedávna.
thanks jana! i was under the impression that 's dobrým otcem' sounded just like *'sdobrým otcem' :? you live and learn! :wink:
Well, the local Moravian pronunciation would be zdobrýmotcem (without glottal stop, regressive assimilation case); so it is not that simple.
what about 'v parku'? when pronounced carefully with the glottal stop after the preposition, does the 'v' still undergo regressive devoicing? /f□_parku/ or /v□_parku/ ?
Justin: _dobrým_ begins with a consonant so what I said cannot apply to it. I was only dealing with consonantic prepositions pre-cliticized to words beginning with a vowel, which vowel is preceded by the glottal stop that is a prop automatically supplied by the language, and is not represented by a letter. The striking feature is that the glottal stop is not erased as expected.
quoting here from a private message from jana (hope you don't mind :wink: ) so it appears that consonantal prepositions retain the post-glottalization even when preceding words beginning with a consonant... have i understood, jana? you were referring to the glottal stop after the 's'?
great! now we're getting somewhere... so consonantal prepositions are post-glottalized no matter what follows it!
Not all of them; it depends on the type of the consonant representing the preposition and on the type of the following consonant. Two adjacent unvoiced consonants - e.g. s Petrem are pronounced without the glottal stop!
oops! should have known better than to make a sweeping conclusion like that... thanks for all the clarifications!
Don't let the linguists scare you, David! With a good ear and good listening skills, you can imitate native speakers quite well without ever formally learning such rules. All you lack, in this regard, is verbal conversation with native Czechs, without which pronunciation is difficult at best anyway (true with most foreign languages).
