A most stimulating discussion of the glottal stop in English RP by Paul Christophersen l and J. D. O'Connor2 threw into relief so many important facts that a student of English phonetics can ROW try to compare the stop with analogous phenomena in kindred languages. This artide is an attempt to revise the data supplied by phoneticians and to offer an accentual hypothesis of the nature and origin of the glottal stop in English. It will be seen that my conclusions do not pretend to be original: in

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... my analysis J shall rely mostly on the Scandinavian data, and it is common knowledge that Danish linguists have long since brought out the affinity between the glottal stop in English and the st0d in literary Danish (ringsdansk) and Danish dialects. a) Phonetic realization of the glottal stop 'Glottal stop' is a convenient term. But it is well known that two distinct phenomena are brought under this denomination, for the glottal stop is not necessarily a ~top. Phonetically, we deal with two different sounds, one of them being occlusive, the other constrictive. In the first case the vocal cords are brought into contact, and an actual stop is produced; after a short period of silence, the pressure is released, and the cords are separated. In the case of the constrictive sound there is no total closure of the vocal cords 3 • The peculiar acoustic effect of the constrictive sound well justifies the terms "glottal roll' (as contrary to ·'glottal stop' or 'glottal catch') and ·'creaky voice', both of which are often used to chara.cterize it. I P. Ch r i s top her s en, The Glottal Stop in English. "English Studies", 1952, vot. XXIII, pp. 156-163.