Ejective consonant

IPA chart non-pulmonic consonants
Clicks ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ ʘ̃ ʘ̃ˀ ʘ͡q ʘ͡qʼ ‼ Implo­sives ɓ ɗ ʄ ᶑ ɠ ʛ Eject­ives pʼ t̪ʼ tʼ ʈʼ cʼ kʼ qʼ fʼ θʼ sʼ ɬʼ ʃʼ ʂʼ ɕʼ xʼ χʼ tsʼ tɬʼ cʎ̝̥ʼ tʃʼ ʈʂʼ kxʼ kʟ̝̊ʼ qχʼ
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In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced, and tenuis consonants. Some languages have glottalized sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives phonologically, while other languages have ejectives that pattern with implosives—this has led to phonologists positing a phonological class of glottalic consonants that includes ejectives.

Description

In producing an ejective, the stylohyoid muscle and digastric muscle contract—causing the hyoid bone and the connected glottis to raise—while the forward articulation (at the velum in the case of [kʼ]) is held, raising air pressure greatly in the mouth, so that when the oral articulators separate, there is a dramatic burst of air. The Adam's apple may be seen moving when the sound is pronounced. In the languages where they are more obvious, ejectives are often described as sounding like “spat” consonants; but ejectives are often quite weak and, in some contexts, and in some languages, are easy to mistake for tenuis or even voiced stops. These weakly ejective articulations are sometimes called intermediates in older American linguistic literature and are notated with different phonetic symbols: ⟨C!⟩ = strongly ejective, ⟨Cʼ⟩ = weakly ejective. Strong and weak ejectives have not been found to be contrastive in any natural language.

In strict, technical terms, ejectives are glottalic egressive consonants. The most common ejective is [kʼ], not because it is easier to produce than other ejectives like [tʼ] or [pʼ] (it isn’t) but because the auditory distinction between [kʼ] and [k] is greater than with other ejectives and voiceless consonants of the same place of articulation. In proportion to the frequency of uvular consonants, [qʼ] is even more common, as would be expected from the very small oral cavity used to pronounce a voiceless uvular stop. [pʼ], on the other hand, is quite rare. This is the opposite pattern to what is found in the implosive consonants, in which the bilabial is common and the velar is rare. Ejective fricatives are rare for presumably the same reason: with the air escaping from the mouth while the pressure is being raised, like inflating a leaky bicycle tire, it is harder to distinguish the resulting sound as salient as a [kʼ].

Occurrence

Ejectives occur in about 20% of the world's languages. Ejectives that phonemically contrast with pulmonic consonants occur in about 15% of languages around the world. They are extremely common in northwest North America and frequently occur throughout the western parts of both North and South America. They are also common in eastern and southern Africa. In Eurasia, the Caucasus forms an island of ejective languages. Elsewhere, they are rare.

Language families that distinguish ejective consonants include all three families of the Caucasus (the Northwest Caucasian languages such as Abkhaz, the Northeast Caucasian languages such as Chechen, and the Kartvelian languages such as Georgian); the Athabaskan, Siouan and Salishan families of North America, along with the many diverse families of the Pacific Northwest from central California to British Columbia; the Mayan family and Aymara; the southern varieties of Quechua (Qusqu-Qullaw); many members of the Afro-Asiatic family (notably most of the Cushitic and Omotic languages, Hausa, and South Semitic languages like Amharic and Tigrinya) and a few Nilo-Saharan languages; Sandawe, Hadza, and the Khoisan families of southern Africa. Among the scattered languages with ejectives elsewhere are Itelmen of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages and Yapese of the Austronesian family. According to the glottalic theory, the Proto-Indo-European language had a series of ejectives (or, in some versions, implosives), but no extant Indo-European language has retained such sounds; ejectives are found today in Ossetic and Eastern Armenian only because of influence of the nearby Northeast Caucasian and/or Kartvelian language families.

It had once been predicted that ejectives and implosives would not be found in the same language, but this is now shown to be incorrect, both being found phonemically at several points of articulation in at least the Nilo-Saharan languages Gumuz, Me'en, and T'wampa; the Mayan language Yucatec; the Salishan language Lushootseed; and the Oto-Manguean language Mazahua. Nguni languages such as Zulu have an implosive b alongside a series of allophonically ejective stops. Dahalo of Kenya has both ejectives and implosives, as well as clicks.

Types of ejectives

The vast majority of ejective consonants noted in the world's languages consists of stops or affricates, and all ejective consonants are obstruents. [kʼ] is the most common ejective, and [qʼ] is common among languages which have uvulars, [tʼ] less so, and [pʼ] is uncommon. Among affricates, [tsʼ], [tʃʼ], [tɬʼ] are all quite common, and [kxʼ] and [ʈʂʼ] are not unusual ([kxʼ] is particularly common among the Khoisan languages, where it is the ejective analog of /k/).

Attested ejective consonants
(excluding ejective clicks and secondary articulations)

	Bilabial	Labio­dental	Linguo­labial	Dental	Alveolar	Labial– alveolar	Post- alveolar	Retroflex	Alveolo- palatal	Palatal	Velar	Labial– velar	Uvular	Epi- glottal
Stop (voiced)	[[|pʼ]]			[[|t̪ʼ]]	[[|tʼ]]	t͡pʼ		[[|ʈʼ]]		[[|cʼ]]	[[|kʼ]] ɡ͡kʼ (ɡʼ)	k͡pʼ	[[|qʼ]] ɢ͡qʼ (ɢʼ)	ʡʼ
Affricate (voiced)		p̪fʼ		[[|tθʼ]]	[[|tsʼ]] d͡tsʼ (dzʼ)		[[|tʃʼ]] d͡tʃʼ (dʒʼ)	[[|ʈʂʼ]]	tɕʼ	[[|cçʼ]]	[[|kxʼ]] ɡ͡kxʼ (ɡɣʼ)		[[|qχʼ]] ɢ͡qχʼ (ɢʁʼ)
Fricative	[[|ɸʼ]]	[[|fʼ]]		[[|θʼ]]	[[|sʼ]]		[[|ʃʼ]]	[[|ʂʼ]]	[[|ɕʼ]]	[[|çʼ]]	[[|xʼ]]		[[|χʼ]]
Lateral affricate				t̪ɬ̪ʼ	[[|tɬʼ]]					[[|cʼ]]	[[|kʼ]]
Lateral fricative				ɬ̪ʼ	[[|ɬʼ]]
Trill	(theoretical)
Nasal	(theoretical)

A few languages utilise ejective fricatives: in some dialects of Hausa, the standard affricate [tsʼ] is a fricative [sʼ]; Ubykh (Northwest Caucasian, now extinct) had an ejective lateral fricative [ɬʼ]; and the related Kabardian also has ejective labiodental and alveolopalatal fricatives, [fʼ], [ʃʼ], and [ɬʼ]. Tlingit is an extreme case, with ejective alveolar, lateral, velar, and uvular fricatives, [sʼ], [ɬʼ], [xʼ], [xʷʼ], [χʼ], [χʷʼ]; it may be the only language with the latter. Upper Necaxa Totonac is unusual and perhaps unique in that it has ejective fricatives (alveolar, lateral, and postalveolar [sʼ], [ʃʼ], [ɬʼ]) but completely lacks ejective stops or affricates (Beck 2006). Other languages with ejective fricatives are Yuchi, which in some sources is analyzed as having [ɸʼ], [sʼ], [ʃʼ], and [ɬʼ] (note this is not the analysis of the Wikipedia article), Keres dialects, with [sʼ], [ʂʼ] and [ɕʼ], and Lakota, with [sʼ], [ʃʼ], and [xʼ] . Amharic is interpreted by many as having an ejective fricative [sʼ], at least historically, but it has been also analyzed as now being a sociolinguistic variant (Takkele Taddese 1992).

Strangely, although an ejective retroflex stop [ʈʼ] is easy to make and quite distinctive in sound, it is rare. It has been reported from Yawelmani and other Yokuts languages, Tolowa, and Gwich'in

Because the complete closing of the glottis required to form an ejective makes voicing impossible, the allophonic voicing of ejective phonemes causes them to lose their glottalization; this occurs in Blin (modal voice) and Kabardian (creaky voice). A similar historical sound change also occurred in Veinakh and Lezgic in the Caucasus, and has been postulated by the glottalic theory for Indo-European. Some Khoisan languages have voiced ejective stops and voiced ejective clicks; however, these actually contain mixed voicing, and the ejective release is voiceless.

Ejective trills are rare, if they exist as distinct sounds at all. An ejective [rʼ] would necessarily be voiceless, but the vibration of the trill, combined with a lack of the intense voiceless airflow of [r̥], gives an impression rather like that of voicing. Similarly, ejective nasals such as [mʼ, nʼ, ŋʼ] (also necessarily voiceless) are not known to occur though they are not particularly difficult to pronounce. (An apostrophe is commonly seen with r, l and nasals, but this is Americanist phonetic notation for a glottalized consonant and does not indicate an ejective.)

Other ejective sonorants are not known to occur. When sonorants are transcribed with an apostrophe in the literature, as if they were ejective, they actually involve a different airstream mechanism: they are glottalized consonants and vowels, where glottalization interrupts an otherwise normal voiced pulmonic airstream, somewhat like English uh-uh (either vocalic or nasal) pronounced as a single sound.

Orthography

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ejectives are indicated with a "modifier letter apostrophe" ⟨ʼ⟩, as in this article. Note that a reversed apostrophe is sometimes used to represent light aspiration, as in Armenian linguistics ⟨p‘ t‘ k‘⟩; this usage is obsolete in the IPA. In other transcription traditions, the apostrophe represents palatalization, e.g., ⟨pʼ⟩ = IPA ⟨pʲ⟩. In some Americanist traditions, an apostrophe indicates weak ejection and an exclamation mark strong ejection, thus: ⟨k̓ , k!⟩. In the IPA, the distinction might be written ⟨kʼ, kʼʼ⟩, though it seems that no language distinguishes degree of ejection.

In alphabets using the Latin script, an IPA-like apostrophe for ejective consonants is common. However, there are other conventions. In Zulu and Xhosa, where the ejection is variable between speakers, plain consonant letters are used: p t k ts tsh kr for /pʼ tʼ kʼ tsʼ tʃʼ kxʼ/. In some conventions for Haida and Hadza, double letters are used: tt kk qq ttl tts for /tʼ kʼ qʼ tɬʼ tsʼ/ (Haida) and zz jj dl gg for /tsʼ tʃʼ cʼ kxʼ/ (Hadza).

List of ejective consonants

Stops

• bilabial ejective <phonos file="bilabial ejective plosive.ogg">[pʼ]</phonos> (in Abkhaz, Adyghe, Amharic, Archi, Hadza, Kabardian, Lezgian, Lakota, Nez Perce, Quechua, Tigrinya, Zulu)
  • labialized bilabial ejective <phonos file="labialized bilabial ejective.ogg">[pʷʼ]</phonos> (in Adyghe)
  • pharyngealized bilabial ejective [pˤʼ] (in Ubykh)
• dental ejective [t̪ʼ] (in Dahalo, Lakota, Tigrinya)
• alveolar ejective <phonos file="alveolar ejective plosive.ogg">[tʼ]</phonos> (in Abkhaz, Adyghe, Amharic, Archi, Avar, Bats, Kabardian, Gwich’in, Nez Perce, Quechua, Tlingit, Zulu)
  • labialized alveolar ejective <phonos file="labialized alveolar ejective.ogg">[tʷʼ]</phonos> (in Abkhaz, Adyghe, Ubykh)
• retroflex ejective [ʈʼ] (in Gwich’in)
• palatal ejective <phonos file="palatal ejective.ogg">[cʼ]</phonos> (in Bats, Hausa, Giwi, Nez Perce)
• velar ejective <phonos file="velar ejective plosive.ogg">[kʼ]</phonos> (in Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Amharic, Archi, Avar, Giwi, Gwich’in, Hausa, Kabardian, Lakota, Nez Perce, Quechua, Sandawe, Tigrinya, Tlingit, Zulu)
  • palatalized velar ejective <phonos file="palatalized velar ejective.ogg">[kʲʼ]</phonos> (in Abaza, Abkhaz, Shapsug, Ubykh)
  • labialized velar ejective <phonos file="labialized velar ejective.ogg">[kʷʼ]</phonos> (in Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Archi, Kabardian, Tlingit, Ubykh)
• uvular ejective <phonos file="uvular ejective stop.ogg">[qʼ]</phonos> (in Abaza, Abkhaz, Archi, Bats, Hakuchi, Nez Perce, Quechua, Tlingit)
  • palatalized uvular ejective [qʲʼ] (in Abaza, Abkhaz, Ubykh)
  • labialized uvular ejective <phonos file="labialized uvular ejective.ogg">[qʷʼ]</phonos> (in Abaza, Abkhaz, Archi, Hakuchi, Tlingit, Ubykh)
  • pharyngealized uvular ejective [qˤʼ] (in Archi, Ubykh)
  • labialized pharyngealized uvular ejective [qˤʷʼ] (in Archi, Ubykh)
• epiglottal ejective <phonos file="epiglottal ejective.ogg">[ʡʼ]</phonos> (in Dargwa)

Affricates

• alveolar ejective affricate <phonos file="alveolar ejective affricate.ogg">[tsʼ]</phonos> (in Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Amharic, Archi, Avar, Giwi, Gwich’in, Hadza, Hausa, Kabardian, Sandawe, Tlingit, Ubykh)
  • labialized alveolar ejective affricate [t͡sʷʼ] (in Archi)
• palato-alveolar ejective affricate <phonos file="palato-alveolar ejective affricate.ogg">[tʃʼ]</phonos> (in Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Amharic, Archi, Avar, Chipewyan, Gwich’in, Hadza, Hausa, Kabardian, Lakota, Quechua, Tigrinya, Tlingit, Ubykh, Zulu)
  • labialized palato-alveolar ejective affricate [t͡ʃʷʼ] (in Abaza, Archi)
• retroflex ejective affricate <phonos file="retroflex ejective affricate.ogg">[ʈ͡ʂʼ]</phonos> (in Abkhaz, Adyghe, Ubykh)
• alveolo-palatal ejective affricate [t͡ɕʼ] (in Abaza, Abkhaz, Ubykh)
  • labialized alveolo-palatal ejective affricate [t͡ɕʷʼ] (in Abkhaz, Ubykh)
• palatal ejective affricate <phonos file="palatal ejective affricate.ogg">[cçʼ]</phonos>
• dental ejective affricate [tθʼ] (in Chipewyan, Gwich’in)
• velar ejective affricate <phonos file="velar ejective affricate.ogg">[kxʼ]</phonos> (in Hadza, Zulu)
• uvular ejective affricate <phonos file="uvular ejective affricate.ogg">[qχʼ]</phonos> (in Avar, Giwi, Lillooet)
• alveolar lateral ejective affricate <phonos file="alveolar lateral ejective affricate.ogg">[tɬʼ]</phonos> (in Baslaney, Chipewyan, Dahalo, Gwich’in, Haida, Lillooet, Nez Perce, Sandawe, Tlingit, Tsez)
• palatal lateral ejective affricate [c͡ʎ̝̥ʼ] (in Dahalo, Hadza)
• velar lateral ejective affricate <phonos file="velar lateral ejective affricate.ogg">[k͡ʟ̝̊ʼ]</phonos> (in Archi, Gǀui)
  • labialized velar lateral ejective affricate [k͡ʟ̝̊ʷʼ] (in Archi)

Fricatives

• bilabial ejective fricative [ɸʼ]
• labiodental ejective fricative <phonos file="labiodental ejective fricative.ogg">[fʼ]</phonos> (in Abaza, Kabardian)
• dental ejective fricative <phonos file="dental ejective fricative.ogg">[θʼ]</phonos> (in Chiwere)
• alveolar ejective fricative <phonos file="alveolar ejective fricative.ogg">[sʼ]</phonos> (in Chiwere, Lakota, Shapsug, Tigrinya, Tlingit)
• alveolar lateral ejective fricative <phonos file="alveolar lateral ejective fricative.ogg">[ɬʼ]</phonos> (in Abaza, Adyghe, Kabardian, Tlingit, Ubykh)
• palato-alveolar ejective fricative <phonos file="palato-alveolar ejective fricative.ogg">[ʃʼ]</phonos> (in Adyghe, Lakota)
  • labialized palato-alveolar ejective fricative <phonos file="labialized palato-alveolar ejective fricative.ogg">[ʃʷʼ]</phonos> (in Adyghe)
• retroflex ejective fricative <phonos file="retroflex ejective fricative.ogg">[ʂʼ]</phonos>
• alveolo-palatal ejective fricative <phonos file="alveolo-palatal ejective fricative.ogg">[ɕʼ]</phonos> (in Kabardian)
• palatal ejective fricative <phonos file="palatal ejective fricative.ogg">[çʼ]</phonos>
• velar ejective fricative <phonos file="velar ejective fricative.ogg">[xʼ]</phonos> (in Tlingit)
  • labialized velar ejective fricative [xʷʼ] (in Tlingit)
• uvular ejective fricative <phonos file="uvular ejective fricative.ogg">[χʼ]</phonos> (in Tlingit)
  • labialized uvular ejective fricative [χʷʼ] (in Tlingit)

Trills

• alveolar ejective trill [rʼ]

Clicks

• Simple ejective clicks [ʘʼ], [ǀʼ], [ǁʼ], [ǃʼ], [ǂʼ] (all five in ǂ’Amkoe)
• Ejective-contour clicks

[ʘqʼ ǀqʼ ǁqʼ ǃqʼ ǂqʼ]

[ʘ̬qʼ ǀ̬qʼ ǁ̬qʼ ǃ̬qʼ ǂ̬qʼ]

[ʘqχʼ ǀqχʼ ǁqχʼ ǃqχʼ ǂqχʼ ~ ʘkxʼ ǀkxʼ ǁkxʼ ǃkxʼ ǂkxʼ ~ ʘkʼ ǀkʼ ǁkʼ ǃkʼ ǂkʼ]

[ʘ̬qχʼ ǀ̬qχʼ ǁ̬qχʼ ǃ̬qχʼ ǂ̬qχʼ ~ ʘ̬kxʼ ǀ̬kxʼ ǁ̬kxʼ ǃ̬kxʼ ǂ̬kxʼ ~ ʘ̬kʼ ǀ̬kʼ ǁ̬kʼ ǃ̬kʼ ǂ̬kʼ]

See also

• Glottalic consonant
• List of phonetics topics

Notes

^a The Sindhi language has implosives.

Bibliography

• Campbell, Lyle. 1973. On Glottalic Consonants. International Journal of American Linguistics 39, 44–46. JSTOR 1264659
• Chirikba, V.A. Aspects of Phonological Typology. Moscow, 1991 (in Russian).
• Fallon, Paul. 2002. The Synchronic and Diachronic Phonology of Ejectives. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93800-7, ISBN 978-0-415-93800-6.
• Hogan, J. T. (1976). "An analysis of the temporal features of ejective consonants." Phonetica 33: 275–284. doi:10.1159/000259776
• Lindau, M. (1984). "Phonetic differences in glottalic consonants." Journal of Phonetics, 12: 147–155. doi:10.1121/1.2019283

External links

• Listen to Ejective Consonant
• WALS map of languages with ejectives (blue and purple)