Ejective Consonant - Types of Ejectives

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. is the most common ejective, and is common among languages which have uvulars, less so, and is uncommon. Among affricates, are all quite common, and is not unusual (and is particularly common among the Khoisan languages), which is surprising since non-ejective is not a common sound.

A few languages utilise ejective fricatives: in some dialects of Hausa, the standard affricate is a fricative ; Ubykh (Northwest Caucasian, now extinct) had an ejective lateral fricative ; and the related Kabardian also has ejective labiodental and alveolopalatal fricatives, and . Tlingit is an extreme case, with ejective alveolar, lateral, velar, and uvular fricatives, ; 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, ) but completely lacks ejective stops or affricates (Beck 2006). Other languages with ejective fricatives are Yuchi, which in some sources is analyzed as having, and (note this is not the analysis of the Wikipedia article), Keres dialects, with, and, and Lakota, with, and . Amharic is interpreted by many as having an ejective fricative, at least historically, but it has been also analyzed as now being a sociolinguistic variant (Takkele Taddese 1992).

Strangely, although an ejective retroflex stop is easy to make and quite distinctive in sound, it is very rare. Retroflex ejective stops and affricates, are reported from Yawelmani and other Yokuts languages, as well as Tolowa, Keresan (with only retroflex affricates), and Gwich'in; however, the retroflex ejective affricate is also found in most Northwest Caucasian languages.

Because the complete closing of the glottis required to form an ejective makes voicing impossible, the allophonic voicing of ejective phonemes cause 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. The Khoisan languages have voiced ejective clicks; however, these actually contain mixed voicing, and the ejective release is voiceless.

Similarly, ejective sonorants don't occur. When sonorants are written with an apostrophe, as if they were ejective, they actually involve a different airstream mechanism: they are glottalized consonants and vowels, where glottalization interrupts an otherwise normal pulmonic airstream, somewhat like English uh-uh (either vocalic or nasal) pronounced as a single sound.