Americanist Phonetic Alphabet (APA) Glottalized Plosive

Question

Could someone please help me to write an apostrophe directly above a character? This symbol is used in the APA for glottalized, and I've scoured the tipa manual and can't find anything there (probably because IPA writes the apostrophe after the character).

Here's an example:

Answer 1

You can use a smaller apostrophe, that can be stacked on the letter with tabular.

\documentclass{article}

\makeatletter
\DeclareRobustCommand\glottal[1]{%
  \check@mathfonts
  \begingroup
  \renewcommand{\arraystretch}{0}%
  \begin{tabular}[b]{@{}c@{}}
  \fontsize{\ssf@size}{0}\selectfont
  \raisebox{-0.7ex}[\dimexpr\height-0.7ex][0pt]{'}\\
  #1
  \end{tabular}%
  \endgroup
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

Some\glottal{t}hi\glottal{n}g

{\Large Some\glottal{t}hi\glottal{n}g\par}

{\footnotesize Some\glottal{t}hi\glottal{n}g\par}

\end{document}

The same code with just \usepackage{newtxtext} (for Times) produces

Answer 2

This is encoded in Unicode as "Combining Comma Above" (U+0313} and with a suitable font and XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX can be entered directly. In the example below I've made a \glottal macro to make input simpler. I've used Doulos SIL as the font, which places the character correctly; other fonts may place it differently, unfortunately (for example, Linux Libertine O and CMU Serif both seem to place it to the right, but Doulos and Charis SIL place it correctly.)

Note your browser may not display the actual character on the site, but if you cut and paste this code into your editor it will 'magically' appear. (I've attached a screenshot of the code for the skeptical.)

As noted in the comments if your editor has trouble displaying the character, you can define the command with its unicode value.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Doulos SIL}
\newcommand{\glottal}[1]{#1̓}
%\newcommand{\glottal}[1]{#1^^^^0313} (Alternative)
\begin{document}
\glottal{t}
\end{document}

Answer 3

You could use stackinset from stackengine package:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{stackengine}

\newcommand{\glottal}[1]{\stackinset{c}{}{t}{-3.2pt}{,}{#1}}
\usepackage{newtxtext}% copied from Mico's answer

\begin{document}
    Some\glottal{t}hing

    Something \glottal{t} something
\end{document}

Answer 4

Here's a solution that uses the \ooalign "primitive" to place a script-sized apostrophe above the macro's argument (here: t).

The code assumes that the \glottal macro will never be used in first-level, let alone second-level subscript and superscript material. I trust this isn't much of a constraint.

\documentclass{article}
\newcommand\glottal[1]{%
   {\ooalign{#1\cr\hidewidth\raisebox{0.7ex}{\scriptsize'}\hidewidth\cr}}}
\usepackage{newtxtext} % for a Times Roman clone
\begin{document}
tt\glottal{t}tt
\end{document}