Laryngeal Variation in the Scottish English Voice Contrast: Glottalisation, Ejectivisation and Aspiration

Abstract

Preaspiration of fricatives and glottalisation of syllabic coda stops can be important phonetic correlates of obstruent /voice/ in some varieties of Scottish English. Within such varieties, this encoding of /voice/ is based on voice quality (laryngeal settings) and is subject to substantial interspeaker variation.

We analyse the occurrence of preaspiration and glottalisation/ejectivisation in relationship to the laryngeal settings of individual speakers to explain the phonetic diversity of the contrast in Scottish English. The paper is intended as an illustration of how various voice quality contrasts can pave ways into phonological systems, and phonetically become the most important acoustical landmarks in the segmental contexts traditionally described in terms of periodicity or its timing.