Variation of the Glottal Stop /ʔ/ in South Estonian Lative Forms

One of the most striking features of South Estonian among other Finnic languages is the occurrence of the glottal stop /ʔ/ as a phoneme, which in modern Võro and Lutsi orthographies is represented by the letter q. While the other grammatical and lexical functions of /ʔ/ are shared amongst the South Estonian varieties, the distribution of the glottal stop in the lative forms varies across dialects, caused by the conservative nature of Lutsi and Kraasna, and the innovations in the western subdialects of Võro. This article examines the occurrence of the glottal stop /ʔ/ at the end of the lative forms manoq ~ mano ’towards’ and kuuq ~ kodoq ~ kodo’(towards) home’, adverbialised illative and allative forms mahaq ~ maaha ’downwards’, pääleq ~ pääle ’onto’, and at the end of illative forms in Leivu South Estonian and the Hargla subdialect of Võro. This study combines qualitative historical analysis with synchronous quantitative analysis.