Voiceless or Voiceless and Voiced vs. Ejective Stops

[Mike Yams]

How uncommon is it for a language to have only two series of stops, where one is voiceless and the other is ejective?

Specifically, I mean unaspirated voiceless, as, if I recall correctly, two-series aspirated voiceless and ejective stop contrasts are common in North America.

What about three series: unaspirated voiceless, voiced, and ejective?

[Znex]

Some of the Caucasian (whichever it be) languages are said to have voiceless vs. voiced. vs. ejective contrasts, eg. Ubykh.

[vokzhen]

Voiceless/ejective isn't uncommon, and they are common in the Pacific Northwest - taking a glance, Southern Wakashan, all Salish, Kutenai, Miluk, Gitxan, Chinook, and Alsea, along with elsewhere Nez Perce, Caddo, Itelmen, Kawesqar, Tepehua, Yapese, and with some fidgeting Mayan (single glottalized series, but includes implosives phonemically or allophonically).

A voiceless/voiced/ejective is pretty common, though if you're discounting a series that has some phonetic aspiration I'm not so sure. Proto-Semitic and I believe most Ethiopian Semitic, North Omotic, many Northeast Caucasian, and Coast Tsimshian, for ones that I don't think are aspirated, at least not strongly.

[Zaarin]

Pacific Northwest

Specifically the southern portion of the PNW sprachbund and the Plateau. I believe it's also found in California.

Voiceless/voiced/ejective describes older Semitic languages whose emphatic consonants were ejective like Biblical Hebrew and Akkadian. And of course modern South Semitic languages where that's still the case, i.e., the Modern South Arabian and Ethiopian Semitic languages.

[dhok]

There are also, I believe, some languages (I want to say they're in the American Southwest, but I can't for the life of me remember where) where ejective stops pattern as lenis and voiceless unaspirated (maybe they are partially aspirated?) as fortis.

[Sumelic]

Voiceless/voiced/ejective describes older Semitic languages whose emphatic consonants were ejective like Biblical Hebrew and Akkadian. And of course modern South Semitic languages where that's still the case, i.e., the Modern South Arabian and Ethiopian Semitic languages.

Aren't the voiceless stops in Semitic languages sometimes realized with more aspiration than the emphatics? I seem to recall that being the explanation for some Hebrew-to-Greek transliteration convention where ט = τ and ת = θ (in all positions, so it's not a reflection of begadkefat weakening). It seems to be mentioned here (Why was the name תאומא transliterated as Θωμᾶς (Thomas) rather than Τωμᾶς (Tomas)?), here (http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/e ... M_00000445) and here:

Code: Select all

http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/why-is-was-ק-and-ט-used-in-loan-words.1545671/

(put in code because the dumb bboard software messes up Unicode in web addresses).

[Yng]

I would say so, yeah. ط sounds less aspirated than ت in a lot of Arabic varieties.

[Zaarin]

Voiceless/voiced/ejective describes older Semitic languages whose emphatic consonants were ejective like Biblical Hebrew and Akkadian. And of course modern South Semitic languages where that's still the case, i.e., the Modern South Arabian and Ethiopian Semitic languages.

Aren't the voiceless stops in Semitic languages sometimes realized with more aspiration than the emphatics? I seem to recall that being the explanation for some Hebrew-to-Greek transliteration convention where ט = τ and ת = θ (in all positions, so it's not a reflection of begadkefat weakening). It seems to be mentioned here (Why was the name תאומא transliterated as Θωμᾶς (Thomas) rather than Τωμᾶς (Tomas)?), here (http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/e ... M_00000445) and here:

Code: Select all

http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/why-is-was-ק-and-ט-used-in-loan-words.1545671/

(put in code because the dumb bboard software messes up Unicode in web addresses).

Yes, I've heard that theory for Akkadian as well.

[Astraios]

In Proto-Egyptian, the Afro-Asiatic ejective and plain series merged into plain voiceless (*tʼ *t → *[t]), while the voiced series shifted to ejective voiceless (*d → *[tʼ]); for that merger to happen, the AA plain series is likely to have been non-aspirated, at least in the early period. By the time Egyptian started being transcribed into other scripts, though, the new plain voiceless series had already become aspirated, cf. Egyptian ptḥ and Greek Φθᾶ “Ptah”.

Relatedly, the three series of Akkadian (voiced, voiceless, ejective) were often transcribed into Sumerian using the letters for its “voiced” series (DA etc.), which is evidence that a) the Sumerian DA-TA contrast was not actually voice-based, and b) none of Akkadian’s three series corresponded to Sumerian TA. In other words, Sumerian had a two-way aspiration contrast [t tʰ], and early Akkadian had a three-way contrast [d t tʼ] with no aspiration. Given later transcriptions though, it presumably did gain aspiration on the plain voiceless series, which seems like a pretty common thing to happen anyway; just within Afro-Asiatic off the top of my head I’m aware of aspiration appearing independently (or perhaps as an areal feature) in at least Egyptian, Northwest Semitic, and Berber languages.

[Zaarin]

In Proto-Egyptian, the Afro-Asiatic ejective and plain series merged into plain voiceless (*tʼ *t → *[t]), while the voiced series shifted to ejective voiceless (*d → *[tʼ])

...That is awesome and I'm using it somewhere in a conlang.

[----]

Voiceless/ejective isn't uncommon, and they are common in the Pacific Northwest - taking a glance, Southern Wakashan, all Salish, Kutenai, Miluk, Gitxan, Chinook, and Alsea, along with elsewhere Nez Perce, Caddo, Itelmen, Kawesqar, Tepehua, Yapese, and with some fidgeting Mayan (single glottalized series, but includes implosives phonemically or allophonically).

Almost all Salish languages aspirate the non-ejective series, for the record.

[vokzhen]

Voiceless/ejective isn't uncommon, and they are common in the Pacific Northwest - taking a glance, Southern Wakashan, all Salish, Kutenai, Miluk, Gitxan, Chinook, and Alsea, along with elsewhere Nez Perce, Caddo, Itelmen, Kawesqar, Tepehua, Yapese, and with some fidgeting Mayan (single glottalized series, but includes implosives phonemically or allophonically).

Almost all Salish languages aspirate the non-ejective series, for the record.

I suspect a number of them do allophonically. Of my examples there, I know at least Nez Perce, Miluk, and some Mayan regularly aspirate non-ejective stops before other stops and word-finally, and Southern Wakashan extends that to all coda positions.