Positional and cooccurrence restrictions on ejectives

Abstract

Different studies have looked at phonotactic restrictions on ejectives from a variety of perspectives focusing on syllable structure or on general patterns of laryngeal features, such as cooccurrence limitations or positionally motivated neutralization of contrast (Blevins 2004, Coulston 2001, MacEachern 1997, Maddieson 2004, Rimrott 2003, Steriade 1999). This paper examining ejectives in 27 languages brings together these diverse approaches suggesting that all phonotactic restrictions are based on articulatory and auditory features often working together. Given that languages vary with respect to articulatory features of their phonemes and with regard to perceptual similarity, different restriction patterns are found cross-linguistically.