Talk:Ejective consonant

message: I listed three types of ejective plosives with samples based on recordings I've heard of native speakers (Quechua). Hope they're helpful (and hopefully properly pronounced). Peter Isotalo 20:52, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
:They sound appropriate to me, if a little bit forced. You're probably just not used to making them. I promise to add the fricatives and affricates that exist in Tlingit whenever I get down to the phonology lab to make recordings. — Jéioosh 20:07, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation files 

message: According to this page at Chris Harvey's languagegeek.com, Yokuts has an voiceless ejective retroflex stop, . I'm not familiar with Penutian languages, so I don't know if any other languages in the family have it. LudwigVan 3 July 2005 16:37 (UTC)
:Yes, it appears they do! Often the underdot represents 'alveolar' in Californian languages, since there is an areal dental-alveolar (or perhaps laminal-apical) distinction through much of the state, but Yokuts retroflexes (presumably apical postalveolar rather than 'true' subapical retroflexes) are confirmed in Mithun (though perhaps she uses the same sources as Harvey). Not just plosives, but also affricates. (The Yokuts 'alveolars' by the way are generally considered dental; they may be laminal denti-alveolar, which is what 'dentals' usually turn out to be.) Thanks! kwami 2005 July 3 21:42 (UTC)
::If you're only concerned about retroflexion, ejectiv retroflex affricates aren't all that rare, occurring in eg. Abkhaz. I think I've seen an article around here about an Asian language with a retroflex ejectiv stop, but can't remember where... --Tropylium (talk) 13:40, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ejective retroflex in a natural language? 

message: The page claims Armenian has ejectives. Is this true? I know Armenian has consonants frequently transliterated {{IPA|[p‘ t‘ k‘]}, but I'm pretty sure these are aspirated, not ejective. --Angr/ 13:24, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right. Good catch. Daniels and Bright transcribe those consonants with aspiration in the IPA, and Ladefoged gives Eastern Armenian as an example of a language which distinguishes aspiration word-finally. kwami 19:49, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Armenian (= Standard Modern Eastern Armenian) really does have ejectives - 5 stops and affricates. They are present in the Yerevan vernacular, which, de facto, is phonologically the basis of the standard literary norm of nowadays - SMEA. Eastern and many Western Armenian dialects, those which haven't undergone historical deglottalisation, use ejectives too. The five SMEA ejective consonants contrast with the five aspirated ones. A few dialects have even more ejectives: the uvular ejective and palatal ejective.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahtrqerin (talk • contribs) 12:04, 7 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Armenian 

message: This page claims that "Ejectives are voiceless consonants that ...". Are voiced ejectives deemed possible?
If not, can anyone please add a reason for this?
If they are possible, can it at least be stated that they are possible (and maybe then not attested for (I don't know, I'm not a linguist))?
--JorisvS 18:58, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: They're implausible. The glottis is held firmly shut in order to force the air column. If air were allowed through, it would pass the glottis in the opposite direction from normal voicing, which makes it pretty unlikely. kwami 06:19, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The closest you can get are the curious "unitary clusters" of vcd stop + ejectiv found in !Xóõ, I suppose they're phonologically voiced ejectivs. --Tropylium (talk) 13:40, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Voiced ejectives? 

message: I've heard informally that Tlingit has a couple of ejective fricatives that are not attested in any other language, viz.  and . These are phonemic, they are contrasted with similar ejective plosives and affricates. Does anyone know whether this is true and they are unique, or if it's just wishful thinking on the part of some ambitious phonologist? — Jéioosh 20:13, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not the same one, but modern Ethiopian Semitic languages (perhaps late Ge'ez as well?) have the ejective affricative  (č', č̣) — a hard č (ch as in "church") sound. They're not fricatives, though. — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 00:15, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ubykh has the former at least. --Tropylium (talk) 13:40, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: ...And Lakota apparently the latter, so no, they're not unique. --Tropylium (talk) 10:30, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Really rare ejective fricatives? 

message: The article says "[p’], on the other hand, is quite rare."  However, the language of the island of Yap, which I worked on for about 20 years, certainly has what I referred to in my books on the language ("Yapese Reference Grammar" and "Yapese-English Dictionary" - John Thayer Jensen et al) as glottalised consonants, including p', t', k', also f' and th' (inter-dental slit fricative) - also glottalised nasals m', n' and ŋ' - but of course these are not ejectives.  Yapese has non-glottalised ch (palatal affricate) and s, but these do not occur glottalised.
I call the stops and fricatives glottalised; they are certainly ejectives by the definition given in the article.
John Thayer Jensen 05:26, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Yapese has ejectives

message: Shouldn't we mention about using underdot for ejectives in many traditions, including for American, Caucasian, Semitic and other languages? --Koryakov Yuri 15:34, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In Semitic languages, underdot usually means "emphatic consonant", however emphatic consonants may be realized in a particular language or language group (not always as ejectives).  In some cases, when transcribing early inscriptions or reconstructed proto-languages whose phonetics are not known, an underdot is deliberately phonetically ambiguous... AnonMoos 00:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Underdot 

message: The term "glottalized" is used by differnt scholars with some differences, though always about the glottis and various air streams.  However, the statement about "glottalized" consonants in the article links "glottalized" to a page that does not seem to agree with the usage of that paragraph.  In fact, I am not clear what the author(s) meant to say.  Pete unseth (talk) 12:29, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I cant say anything about what you've read as you dont say what you've read. But, you may be reading about a natural class of glottalized consonants which may consist of phonetically different airstream mechanisms. For example, a language may have an ejective k and an implosive b (e.g. Mam language). Here a phonologist may analyze this language as having glottalized stops and non-glottalized stops, that is, two phonologically contrasting classes. Another example would be a language that had sonorants with creaky voice (contrasting with modal sonorants) and ejective stops (contrasting with pulmonic stops) (e.g., Klallam language) — a linguist may choose to group the creaky voiced sonorants and the ejectives into a glottalized consonant class. So, a linguist may choose to group phonetically different consonants into a single phonological category for phonological reasons (the reasons could either be the same phonological processes effect involve all sounds in the category or for reasons of symmetry). Anyway, I've added a note to this effect here. – ishwar  (speak) 04:38, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Glottalized consonants

message: I've seen in some older texts the usage of the term "explosive consonants" to describe ejectives.  Is there any particular reason why? --Daniel Blanchette 21:36, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably because the stronger burst of air that comes with it.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:24, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Also to contrast with implosive consonant, perhaps. This use should be avoided, though, because explosive consonant is also an older term for plosive consonant, at least in German: Explosiv(laut). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:56, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ejectives and Explosive consonants? 

message: maybe we could mention that in the artificial na'vi language of the avatarmovie there are ejectives?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.60.163.191 (talk) 11:42, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm somewhat resistant, but at the same time a lot of people have heard Na'vi speech and mentioning it in the occurrence section may help some readers out.  What do other people think? — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 22:35, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Makes sense to me considering the Na'vi language appears to be deem'd sufficiently notable to have a page of its own. (As an aside, this could justify noting the Klingon  on the topic of affricates, too…) --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 23:12, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, your aside has hit on my resistance.  How do we justify including Na'vi here without opening the floodgates to incorporate every fanboy conlang in Wikipedia's language articles? — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 00:33, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Not "every fanboy conlang" will pass notability. Those that do, I do not see a particular reason to avoid mentioning at all, at least on the topic of their more notable features. I don't think it would be usable to include conlangs as examples for things like /n/ however (with the possible exception of Esperanto perhaps). --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 01:13, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, but what's our criteria for notability?  It shouldn't be just if there's a Wikipedia article on it.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 03:41, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I have taken the liberty of relocating the "Na'vi" reference to a separate section headed "Reference in popular culture". The study of global occurence of  ejectives (or any other phonological fact) in natural languages is science. The study of the use of ejectives in an artificial language created for use in a film belongs to art criticism. For example the presence of ejectives in Na'vi is a fact that would be important if we wanted to judge, say, how convincing the representation of an alien culture is in the film. I sympathise with Aeusoes1 on this and I think the article does not need this reference but given the lack of concensus I think the separate heading is a compromise. UnaDormienda (talk) 22:59, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem with the "in popular culture" compromise is that such sections are deprecated.  I don't have a problem with mentioning Na'vi as the article has since March of this year; my concern is more where the boundary lies between notable conlang and nonnotable one.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 00:03, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

text: The best reaason for listing Na'vi would be that many people have heard it -- it is more accessible. The average reader of English Wikipedia would have to travel to remote places to meet up with speakers of the languages listed in the article. You can sample Na'vi just by ordering a DVD and listening carefully. The criterion could be the likelihood, for the average English reader, to be exposed to the conlang or the ease of obtaining a "standard" sample.  — Solo Owl (talk) 17:10, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ejectives in the Na'vi language 

message: Ejectives occur in English too, as an optional variant for (mainly) voiceless stops - See Gordeeva, Olga B. and Scobbie, James M (2011) Laryngeal Variation in the Scottish English Voice Contrast: Glottalisation, Ejectivisation and Aspiration. CASL Working Paper WP-19. QMU. http://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/2793/  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.83.93.50 (talk) 08:30, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-phonemic ejectives in English 

message: 129.78.233.211 (talk) 07:20, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  How do ejectives usually evolve from non-ejective consonants? 

message: Hi, I'm a long way from being a linguistics professional.  I'm familiar with words like plosive, labial, voiced and unvoiced.  I've learned some French, German, Spanish and Bahasa.  But I can barely understand anything in this article.  It's just too technical.  Although I can click on the little audio things, that  works.
It would be nice if I could understand something about what you're all talking about, without having to click on every link to read about all those other topics, which might be poorly explained, too.  Like, say, something in the introduction.  And, something concrete, about specific sounds, not trying to make generalizations to large numbers of sounds found in languages that 96% of people didn't know even existed.    Something like this:
* Start by saying the word "Kaput".  Now instead of saying the "p", close off the back of your mouth with the back of your tongue, like you're saying a "k", but say the "p".  It should sound louder softer, almost like you were saying "Cadette" in American english or "Nevets" in British english.   that's the ejective P sound.
Something like that, changed to actually be right instead of the goofy stuff I wrote above.  OsamaBinLogin (talk) 00:37, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: What you are asking for sounds more like a Wikibooks "How to pronounce the IPA" project than anything that should be in this article. Some topics will be technical, there's no way around that. But on the other hand, yes, starting the Description section with the stylohyoid muscle is a bit needlessly hardcore… --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 09:29, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to reiterate OsamaBinLogin's request. The abstract and opening paragraph leave me with no idea whatsover what this thing sounds like. The beginning of an article needs to be useful to the interested but still-naïve visitor. Since this is English Wikipedia, giving a hint of an English-language example right up front is helpful. If examples are hard to come by, a hint could be like, "Rare in English, except some Scottish pronunciations of P." helps a lot. Thansks to anyone who Phytism (talk) 16:26, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Me Too!