Stops and affricates and terminology

James Crippen jcrippen at GMAIL.COM
Wed Dec 2 04:11:19 UTC 2009


As far as I understand things, in all the Athabaskan languages the
series of (oral) stops and affricates together form a natural class of
consonants. Certainly this is true in Tlingit, where affricates behave
like stops phonologically. (Phonetically they are quite different, of
course.) The annoying thing is that I have to keep writing clumsy
phrases like "all unaspirated stops and affricates", or "all ejective
stops and affricates". Is there a term which unites both classes under
a single umbrella? Something like "obstruent" but excluding
fricatives? Saying "non-fricative obstruents" is even worse than
"stops and affricates". I have asked all of my local phonologists,
even the historical linguists, but none could think of such a term.

Thanks,
James



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