phonotactic restrictions on ejectives a typological survey ___________________________ carmen jany...
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Phonotactic Restrictions on Ejectives
A Typological Survey
___________________________
Carmen [email protected]
This presentation
Introduction Language sample Restrictions
Based on syllable structure Based on position and co-occurrence
Ejectives & Phoneme Inventory Summary & Conclusions
Introduction
This paper: examines phonotactic restrictions of ejective stops and phoneme inventories
Sample: 27 mostly unrelated languages, but from 3 major geographical areas
Goal: to find general tendencies in phono-tactic restrictions and possible explanations
Introduction
Ejectives occur in 18% of the world’s languages (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996)
Strongly regional geographic distribution (Maddieson 2004)
Ejectives are non-pulmonic egressive consonants produced with closed glottis while occlusion in the oral cavity
Introduction
Generally no sharp division between ejectives and plosives + glottal stop
Ejectives are mostly voiceless stops (only voiceless ejective stops examined in this paper)
Tendency to occur only at same places of articulation as other stops in same language
Occurrence hierarchy: velar > dental/alveolar > bilabial > uvular (Maddieson 1984)
Language sample
Ejectives found in 3 areas: the Americas, Africa, the Caucasus
This study: 27 languages, 19 from the Americas and 4 each from other 2 areas
Still great genetic diversity (see handout) Materials used: grammars & secondary
sources (see handout)
Restrictions
Two main types: Ejectives do only or do not occur in certain positions
(not in coda, leftmost in morpheme) Ejectives can only or cannot co-occur with certain
segments (not with other ejectives, only with identical ejectives)
=> Position within syllable/word & co-occurrence with other segments within syllable/word
Restrictions
Both types depend on phonetic & phono-logical context (segments that precede/follow)
Both types can be attributed to articulatory & auditory features
Syllable-based restrictions
Often described in grammars which cover positional restrictions
Both: positional & co-occurrence Limitations to onset/coda position in
syllables/words & to onset/coda clusters However: complex onsets/codas not in all
languages & sometimes vaguely described
Syllable-based restrictions
Expected restrictions for phonetic reasons: stops not always released in coda position => ejectives limited to onset position (absence of audible release would eliminate contrast)
Blevins (2004): in general, fewer contrasts in coda position than in onset position
Syllable-based restrictions
Information on positional restrictions only for 21/27 languages
8/21 languages do not allow ejectives in coda position (no mention of word-edges)
Assumption: Languages with no restrictions always release coda stops (avoiding neutralization of contrast)
Syllable-based restrictions
Restrictions on consonant clusters for articulatory and auditory reasons
Clusters show similar restrictions in onset and coda position
Cluster information missing for 11 languages 9 lack complex onsets & 7 complex codas A few restrictions (see handout)
Syllable-based restrictions
Explanations for restrictions to following segments: Blevins (2004): Ejectives commonly contrast
with other stops before sonorants, but not before obstruents and word-finally
Steriade (1999): Ejectives depend on right-hand context because they are postglottalized
Syllable-based restrictions
Explanation for restrictions to preceding segments: Articulatory difficulty and perceptual complexity
(see Bella Coola ban on two-ejective clusters)
Ejectives only in roots: 3/27 languages (may be related to affixing pattern and positional restrictions)
Position/Co-occurrence restrictions
No restrictions reported for 6 languages Restrictions for 5 languages syllable-based Positional restrictions:
Ejectives occur at the left edge of a domain (stem-initial, leftmost in morpheme)
Explanations: Initial position perceptually more salient; stops tend to be released initially
Position/Co-occurrence restrictions
Co-occurrence restrictions based on similarity Some languages allow only very similar
segments (homorganic, same laryngeal features), others only dissimilar segments
Some languages allow only identical segments to co-occur
Some languages ban co-occurrence within morpheme or root
Position/Co-occurrence restrictions
Explanation (MacEachern 1997): Restrictions based on auditory similarity and identity 4 Patterns, each with subset of restrictions of next pattern
forming implicational hierarchy E.g. pattern 4 with most restrictions: co-occurrence of
extremely similar no, but identical yes Co-occuring elements on scale of similarity: identical –
very dissimilar Syllable-based co-occurrence restrictions also based
on similarity (ejective not next to glottal stop)
Ejectives & Phoneme Inventory
Maddieson’s (1984) claims tested a) Ejectives in the same places of articulation as
other stops in a given language b) Certain places of articulation are preferred over
others: velar > dental/alveolar > bilabial > uvular
a) and b) mostly confirmed Two contradictions: Tzutujil, Hupa
Summary & Conclusions
Restrictions either positional of co-occurrence Positional: ejectives at left edge (syllable or
other domain) Articulatory explanation: lack of stop release in
coda position Auditory explanation: marked segments in
perceptually more salient position
Summary & Conclusions
Articulatory and auditory reasons working together: Lack of an audible release in coda eliminates phonetic cue
for contrast perception resulting in laryngeal neutralization
Co-occurrence limitations based on auditory similarity Languages differ where they set the point at which similarity
becomes unacceptable (dissimilar-identical) Languages also vary with respect to the domain of the
restriction (root, morpheme, syllable, word)
Summary & Conclusions
All phonotactic restrictions of ejectives can be explained in terms of articulatory variation and ease and on perceptual complexity and similarity
Given that languages vary with respect to articulatory features and with regard to perceptual similarity, different restrictions found cross‑linguistically
Cross‑linguistic phonetic analysis is needed to have experimental confirmation of these tendencies