Re: Relative frequency of ejectives

Steven wrote:
<<
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'
 >>

You know what, I was thinking of glottalic *ingressive*,
not *egressives*.  I think I just mixed the two up, because
this is right, as far as I know.

Interestingly enough, though, I haven't run across a language
that doesn't have /p'/, /t'/ and /k'/ if they have any ejectives
(except for historical Arabic, if true [I've heard a different story
about [q]]).

Incidentally, check out the phonology of Ubykh:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_phonology

Eek!

-David
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"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
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