Ráz ve španělštině, italštině a portugalštině českých mluvčích

Glottal stops placed before words starting with a vowel are an integral part of the sound patterns of Czech; however, in Romance languages glottal stops are quite rare and linking to the previous word is much more common. In this study, we examine the extent to which more and less experienced Czech learners of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese (51 in total) use glottal stops or linking in their target language, and compare them with native speakers (29 in total). Analyses of word- and also morpheme-initial contexts reveal that the glottal stop is transferred into the learners’ target language word initially but almost never within words. In line with our hypotheses, the more experienced groups are found to use fewer glottal stops than the less experienced speakers, but still considerably more than the native control groups. We also consider the effect of lexical stress, segmental context and semantic status of the respective words on glottalization. Methodological implications for the teaching of Romance languages in the Czech context are also discussed