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Re: Ejectives, was Re: New H/G lang?

From:Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 13, 1999, 16:29
R. Nierse wrote:

>> Van: Ed Heil <edheil@...> >> Aan: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...> >> Onderwerp: Ejectives, was Re: New H/G lang? >> Datum: dinsdag 12 oktober 1999 23:24 > >> I don't believe ejective nasals are possible, because the glottis >> cannot be used to produce an airstream in the nasal tract, only the >> oral cavity. >They do exist: Sechelt (Salishan) q@m'=E9l 'to become high tide' >also difficult to pronounce: n@w'os 'face',=20
Actually, the so called 'ejective nasals' of the salishan and other=20 northwest coast indian languages are more appropriately called nasals=20 with creaky voice (i.e., laryngealized nasals). Ladefoged and Maddieson=20 in their book 'Sounds of the Worlds Languages' shows Spectrograms of=20 some Salishan words and the 'ejective nasals' clearly have vocal chord=20 vibration but of a more creaky type. Indeed, Ladefoged and Maddieson=20 labels these as creaky voiced nasals. I don't think ejective nasals are possible as speech sounds for that=20 would require a sufficient amount of airstream to exit the nose. A=20 glottalic airstream is hardly sufficient in my opinion for it to be=20 auditorily perceptive.
>> And there can be no voice with an ejective, because the >> vocal cords are shut completely in order to produce the ejective >> pressure. And ejectives must be of fairly short duration, because >> there is a fairly small volume of air available above the glottis. >> But beyond that, anything's possible: glottalic fricatives and >> affricates are certainly common enough.
Ditto! Hence, no ejectives nasal (see above).
>Thomas wrote: >> So, does this language have a phonemic glottal stop? If so, wouldn't >> it be better just to say it's a consonant cluster in which a glottal =
stop
>> is the second element in the cluster? >Yes it is a consonant cluster. Nevertheless it is a minimal pair in >Yucatec. > >> Besides, "glottalic" (as an adjective) >> is already most often used in the literature to refer specifically to =
the
>> air stream mechanism, not the place of articulation ("glottal" is =
used
>for >> that). >We must keep "glottalic" for air stream mechanism and discard the term >"glottalized" (and use "ejective"). I even don't know of a natlang that =
has
>[p?] or [t?] instead of [p'] or [t'].
I suspect that there are two types of what many have labeled = 'ejectives'.=20 A 'true' ejective would clearly have a glottalic airstream. So an = ejective=20 stop would be followed by a brief period of silence as the glottis is=20 constricted and forced upwards. Then there are those 'ejectives'=20 that are followed by a brief period of creaky voicing, because the=20 glottis is not as constricted. Waveforms shown in Ladefoged and Maddiesons book of ejectives in Navajo=20 and Hausa show that there are clear differences. The Navajo ejectives=20 are released into creaky voicing, while the Hausa ejectives are followed = by a very brief period of silence. Yet the glottis in the Hausa = ejectives=20 is release more quickly into normal voicing than it is in Navajo, where=20 the glottis is only released gradually. One could therefore postulate that the glottis in [p?] would be released = gradually into a creaky voice (as it is in Navajo), while [p'] would=20 have to be released into a very brief period of silence due to a very=20 constricted glottis. Its all a matter of interpretation. And as all interpretation goes, may=20 be subject to a little debate. -kristian- 8)