Re: Relative frequency of ejectives

--- Alex Fink <a4pq1injbok_0@...> schrieb:

> David says on the Kalusa comment forum that | [k']
is
> rare, as far as ejectives go. Certainly more common
> than [q'], | but not as common as [p'], [t'], [ts']
> or [tS'], as far as I know.
>
> This runs counter to what I thought I knew about the
> frequencies. To my knowledge, [p'] was the really
> marked one (witness the glottalic theory of PIE),
> [q'] was not all that rare (standard Georgian, for
> instance, has [q'] as its only uvular stop), and
[k']
> was quite common.
>
> Can anyone corroborate either of these sets of
> assertions?
I concur; everything I've seen points to a hierarchy
that runs something like [k'] (= most common of all) >
[t'] > [p'] (= least common of all).

At least, the Semitic languages support this, if we
assume that the [q] in Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew came
from an earlier *k'.

We find *p' in none of those languages — except for,
notably, certain dialects of Aramaic, if memory
serves, possibly as a result of the phenomenon of
emphatic spreading seen in that language family when
two emphatics run right next to each other.

According to William Croft in 'Typology and
Universals', there's a set of hierarchies
corresponding to certain classes of plosives; I think
it runs like this:

Voiceless pulmonic: k > t > p

(/p/ is the most common one to drop out of a voiceless
pulmonic stop system; viz. Arabic and Japanese, where
/p/ shifted to /f/ and /h/, respectively)

Voiced pulmonic: b > d > g

(/g/ is the most common phoneme to drop out of a
voiced pulmonic stop system; viz. Dutch, where /g/
shifted to /x/, mostly)

Glottalized/ejective: k' > t' > p'

(already elucidated this hierarchy with the Semitic
languages)

Implosive: b/ > d/ > g/

(afraid I can't furnish any examples, implosives being
vanishingly rare)

In the conlang I'm working on now, the ejective system
is [t'], [ts'] (evolved from a conflation of [s'],
[ts'], [tS'] and [tK']; as such, it's a very common
phoneme) and [q'] (evolved from [k']).

I'm sure I got the idea from somewhere; I think I'm
semi-consciously taking features from both the Navajo
(= poverty of labial phonemes), Kartvelian (= lotsa
glottals) and Semitic (= ditto) stop systems.


		
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