Bohemica Olomucensia

The Realization of the Glottal Stop in Dialogues by Speakers From

The study presents findings from an analysis of dialogues by non-professional speakers, with the aim of identifying contemporary tendencies in the regional Czech pronunciation. The focus is placed on the production of the glottal stop and prosthetic sounds. The previous research has suggested that speakers from Moravian and Silesian regions exhibit a tendency to omit the glottal stop. A non-standard phonetic feature is the occurrence of prosthesis - the insertion of [v] or [h] preceding vowel-initial words. The corpus includes speech samples by 58 speakers representing four dialect groups: Bohemian, Central Moravian, Eastern Moravian, and Silesian. The analysis primarily addresses the frequency of glottal stop omission, secondarily investigating the use of prosthesis. The analysis was conducted with respect to the speakers' regional background and gender. Additionally, potential influencing factors - such as level of education, or long-term residence outside the speaker's native region - were considered. The results demonstrate a higher rate of glottal stop omission among speakers from Moravia/Silesia compared to those from Bohemia. When instances of prosthesis are included, the overall degree of linking is found to increase among Bohemian speakers, which reflects long-term trends in contemporary spoken Czech.

Keywords: Glottal Stop; Prosthesis; Phonetics; Dialect; Spontaneous Dialogues; Regional Speech; Pronunciation