Cover not available

In:Advances in Sociophonetics
Edited by Chiara Celata and Silvia Calamai
[Studies in Language Variation 15] 2014
► pp. 189–204

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Ejectives in English and German

Linguistic, sociophonetic, interactional, epiphenomenal?

Published online: 12 June 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.15.07sim
This paper describes the phonetic form, the distribution and the possible functions of ejectives in English and German, proposing that ejectives are on the increase in different varieties in English. The problems of teasing apart the different contributions of allophonic regularity, interactional function, sociophonetic variability and epiphenomenal inevitability in accounting for ejectives in English are discussed. Possible production mechanisms behind ejectives in both languages are explored and doubt is cast on previous epiphenomenal accounts which have ignored the importance of a pulmonic component in creating the necessary intra-oral pressure increase. This, in turn, raises questions about possible production mechanisms behind ejectives in languages in which they play a regular part in the phonological inventory.
References (40)
References
Catford, John C. 1977. Fundamental Problems in Phonetics . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coleman, John, Mark Liberman, Greg Kochanski, Lou Burnard & Jiahong Yuan. 2011. “Mining a Year of Speech”. VLPS 2011: New Tools and Methods for Very-Large-Scale Phonetics Research , Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, 29th-31st January 2011.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cravens, Thomas D. & Luciano Giannelli. 1995. “Relative salience of gender and class in a situation of multiple competing norms”. Language Variation and Change 7. 261–285. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Docherty, Gerard J., James Milroy, Lesley Milroy & David Walshaw. 1997. “Descriptive adequacy in phonology: A variationist perspective”. Journal of Linguistics 33. 275–310. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Foulkes, Paul, James M. Scobbie & Dominic Watt. 2010. “Sociophonetics”. Handbook of Phonetic Sciences ed. by William Hardcastle, John Laver & Fiona Gibbon (2nd edition), 703–754. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grawunder, Sven, Adrian P. Simpson & Madzhid Khalilov. 2010. “Phonetic characteristics of ejectives – samples from Caucasian languages”. Turbulent sounds. An interdisciplinary guide ed. by Susanne Fuchs, Martine Toda & Marzena ?ygis, 209–244. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Higginbottom, Eleanor. 1964. “Glottal reinforcement in English”. Transactions of the Philological Society 63. 129–142. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail. 1983. “On a failed hypothesis: ‘Conjunctionals’ as overlap- vulnerable”. Tilburg Papers in Language and Literature 28. 29–33.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kingston, John C. 1985. The phonetics and phonology of the timing of oral and glottal events . PhD Thesis, Berkeley, University of California.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
, 2005. “The phonetics of Athabaskan tonogenesis”. Athabaskan prosody ed. by Sharon Hargus & Keren Rice, 137–184. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William, Sharon Ash & Charles Boberg. 2006. The Atlas of North American English . Berlin & New York: Mouton De Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindau, Mona. 1982. “Phonetic differences in glottalic consonants”. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 71/S1. 22. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1984. “Phonetic differences in glottalic consonants”. Journal of Phonetics 12. 147–155.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Local, John K., 2003. Variable domains and variable relevance: interpreting phonetic exponents. Journal of Phonetics 31. 321–339. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Local, John K. & John Kelly. 1986. “Projection and ‘silences’: notes on phonetic detail and conversational structure”. Human Studies 9. 185–204. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Local, John K., John Kelly & William H.G. Wells. 1986. “Some phonetic aspects of turn-delimitation in the speech of Urban Tynesiders”. Journal of Linguistics 22. 411–437. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lodge, Ken R. 1984. Studies in the Phonology of Colloquial English . London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Milroy, James, Lesley Milroy, Sue Hartley & David Walshaw. 1994. “Glottal stops and Tyneside glottalization: Competing patterns of variation and change in British English”. Language Variation and Change 6. 327–357. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Müller, E. & W. S. Brown. 1980. “Variations in the supraglottal air pressure waveform and their articulatory interpretation”. Speech and language: Advances in basic research and practice 4. 317–389.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grabe, Esther, Francis Nolan & Kimberley J. Farrar. 1998. “IViE - A comparative transcription system for Intonational Variation in English”. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing ed. by Robert H. Mannell & Jordi REobert-Ribes, 1259–1262. Australian Speech Science and Technology Association, Incorporated (ASSTA).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nolan, Francis, Kirsty Mc Dougall, Gea de Jong & Toby Hudson. 2009. “The DyViS database: style-controlled recordings of 100 homogeneous speakers for forensic phonetic research”. International Journal of Speech Language and the Law 16. 31–57.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ogden, Richard. 2009. An introduction to English phonetics . Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ohala, John J. 1974. “Experimental historical phonology”. Historical linguistics II. Theory and description in phonology. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Edinburgh, September 2–7, 1973) ed. by John M. Anderson & Charles Jones, 353–389. Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1979. “The contribution of acoustic phonetics to phonology”. Frontiers of speech communication research ed. by Björn Lindblom & Sven Öhman, 355–363. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1995. “A probable case of clicks influencing the sound pattern of some European languages”. Phonetica 52. 160–170. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1997. “Emergent stops”. Proceedings of the 4th Seoul International Conference on Linguistics (SICOL 1997) , Seoul, 11th–15th August 1997. 45–50.
Ohala, John J. & Maria Grazia Busà. 1995. “Nasal loss before voiceless fricatives: a perceptually-based sound change”. Rivista di Linguistica 7. 125–144.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roach, Paul. 1973. “Glottalization of English /p/, /t/, /k/ and /t?/ - a re-examination”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 3. 10–21. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1979. “Laryngeal-oral coarticulation in glottalized English plosives”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 9. 2–6. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. A little encyclopedia of phonetics. [URL]
Rothenberg, Martin. 1968. “The breath-stream dynamics of simple-released-plosive production”. Bibliotheca Phonetica No 6. Basel & New York: Karger. [URL]
Simpson, Adrian P. 1992. “Casual speech rules and what the phonology of connected speech might really be like”. Linguistics 30. 535–548. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2007. “Acoustic and auditory correlates of non-pulmonic sound production in German”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37. 173–182. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simpson, Adrian P., Klaus J. Kohler & Tobias Rettstadt, eds. 1997. The Kiel Corpus of Read/Spontaneous Speech - Acoustic data base, processing tools and analysis results (= AIPUK, 32) . Kiel: University of Kiel.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Trudgill, Paul. 1974. The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Warner, Natasha. 1996. “Acoustic characteristics of ejectives in Ingush”. Proceedings of the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 1996) , Philadelphia, 3rd–6th October 1996. New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer. 1525–1528. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wells, John C. 1982. Accents of English, Vol.1: An Introduction . Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wright, Richad, Sharon Hargus & Katharine Davis. 2002. “On the categorization of ejectives: data from Witsuwit’en”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 32. 43–77. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wysocki, Tamra M. 2004. Acoustic analysis of Georgian stop consonants and stop clusters . PhD Thesis, Chicago, University of Chicago.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Wang, Yizhou, Carmel O’Shannessy, Vanessa Davis, Rikke Bundgaard-Nielsen, Joshua Roberts & Denise Foster
2024. Production and perception of stop voicing in Central Australian Aboriginal English: A cross-generational study. Australian Journal of Linguistics 44:1 ► pp. 69 ff. DOI logo
Easterday, Shelece & Joan Bybee
2023. Diachronic phonological typology: understanding inventory structure through sound change dynamics. Linguistic Typology 27:2 ► pp. 405 ff. DOI logo
Brandt, Erika & Adrian P. Simpson
2021. The production of ejectives in German and Georgian. Journal of Phonetics 89 ► pp. 101111 ff. DOI logo
Vietti, Alessandro, Birgit Alber & Barbara Vogt
2018. Initial laryngeal neutralisation in Tyrolean. Phonology 35:1 ► pp. 79 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue