The ejective and voiced labial phonemes are harder to distinguish from each other, especially in non-initial positions where contrast is nearly neutralized.
In word-final position the ejective /p/ and the voiced /b/ are both realized as the voiceless unreleased stop [p], which coincides with a wider pattern of final devoicing and deglottalization in the language.
'Phonetic conditioning of word-final ejective stops in the speech of Scottish English pre-school children'.
The use of qualitative data from semi-structured interviews helps unearth a number of features that have received little or no attention with regard to any L1 accent in the British Isles, among them the use of ejectives and an unusually fronted hesitation particle.
The research also indicate that as elevation increases, so does the likelihood of languages with
ejectives.
Other unfamiliar phonemes also suggest word breaks:
ejectives in (f and 1), and an aspirated uvular in (j).
"soft
ejective", most like [b']; the same as in [pamba] 'drum'?
Tolowa (Athabaskan, Northern Amerindian) has a contrast between plain and
ejective stops in all oral noncontinuants; this contrast does not exist in the labials, however.
Since the book under review deals with historical phonetics, special mention should be made of the glottalized or
ejective pronunciation of some consonants, of the rounded or labialized consonants, and of the considerable number of palatalized consonants, features that are not known in the other Semitic languages.
VOT of aspirated stops was found longest, for voiced stops it was shortest, and
ejectives had an intermediate VOT.
Kortlandt 1985: 193), not
ejectives, as they are in Athabaskan.
Lonnet and Simeone-Serelle also confirm that the emphatic consonants of MSA are glottalized rather than pharyngealized, placing MSA with Ethiopic, against Arabic; this supports the conclusion that Proto-Semitic emphatics were glottalized
ejectives. (See, for example, A.