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The phoneme is the most commonly attested consonant in Mono discourse. This
corresponds to Maddieson’s (1997) observation that k is the most commonly attested
consonant in most languages.
There is much evidence to support the status of the glottal stop as a phoneme in
Mono. First, it occurs in items from most grammatical categories:
(7) Sample words containing a glottal stop
a. nouns
H H H H
‘name’
=(=( =(=( =(=( =(=( ‘paddle’
‘word’
J=M=( J=M=( J=M=( J=M=(
b. verbs
‘basin’
= = = =
‘suck’
A A A A
‘call’
KHK KHK KHK KHK
c. pronouns
‘blow’
== == == == ‘1PL.EXCL’
AA AA AA AA
d. kinship terms
‘2PL’
==( ==( ==( ==( ‘aunt’
=K( =K( =K( =K(
e. animal names
‘uncle’
( ( ( ( ‘cricket’
=(C =(C =(C =(C ‘eel’
f. adverbs (both ideophones)
L=A L=A L=A L=A ‘throw out’
MM M M ‘throw out’
Second, the glottal stop is not rare, either in the lexicon or in discourse.
Third, it is attested both in word-initial and word-medial positions. However, here
a caveat must be noted. Its phonemic status in word-initial position is dubious, as is the
case in many Ubangian languages (Boyd 1989: 200). The cases of the glottal stop
occurring in word-initial position in Mono are in cliticized pronouns (e.g. = = =
= ‘1PL.EXCL’,
A A A A ‘2PL’) and in inflected verbs (e.g. = = = = ‘suck’, A A A A ‘call’, KHK KHK KHK KHK ‘blow’). It does not contrast
with its absence in this position, so one possible interpretation of the glottal stop in these
cases is that it is epenthetic. There is evidence for and against this interpretation in the
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