Glottal Stop

The glottal stop has only marginal status. In addition to its possible occurrence as a realisation of /k/ (see the Section on Plosives), it can occur optionally at the start of morphemes with an underlying initial vowel. It is also found variably in some Arabic loanwords like saat [saʔat] ‘second’.

In formal styles, a glottal stop can occur non-distinctively intervocalically across a morpheme boundary, for example before the -i locative suffix, as in mengenai /məŋənai/ [məŋənɛʔi] ‘about’, or after certain prefixes, as in seorang /səoraŋ/ [sɒʔoraŋ] ‘one-person' and dianggap /diaŋgap/ [diʔaŋgap] ‘be considered’.

However, it is often not present, partly due to first language influence, as [ʔ] does not occur in Brunei Malay, except utterance-finally, where underlyingly vowel-final words optionally occur with a final glottal stop (Poedjosoedarmo 1996).