Stops and affricates and terminology

[Gunnar Ólafur Hansson]

Speaking as a phonologist, it is my impression that many people use  
"plosive" as a cover term for {stop, affricate}; that is, for non- 
continuant obstruents.

But I've also seen others do it the other way around, using "stop" as  
the cover term, and "plosive" to refer specifically to non-affricate  
stops. The problem is that in this narrower technical sense of  
"plosive" (which you find in Ladefoged's standard textbook "A Course  
in Phonetics", among other places), that term is supposed to refer  
specifically to *pulmonic* stops. So ejectives wouldn't be covered  
under that, which means that for Athabaskan languages we'd be back in  
the same dilemma with how to refer to the affricate vs. stop  
distinction among *ejectives*.

So my vote would go with using "plosive" in the wider, cover-term  
sense described above. I've always found that a handy terminology.

--Gunnar

===========================================
  Gunnar Ólafur Hansson
  Department of Linguistics
  University of British Columbia
  Totem Field Studios
  2613 West Mall
  Vancouver, BC  V6T 1Z4
  CANADA

  phone: (604) 822-4658
  email: ghansson at interchange.ubc.ca
  web: http://www.linguistics.ubc.ca/people/ghansson
===========================================



On 1-Dec-09, at 8:11 PM, James Crippen wrote:

> 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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