Stops and affricates and terminology

[Joyce McDonough]

James

In a recent paper in Journal of Phonetics, we referred to this class as 
a class of 'stops', defined it once as the stops and affricates.  It got 
by the reviewers just fine.

McDonough, J. and V. Wood (2008). "The stop contrasts of the Athabaskan 
languages." Journal of Phonetics Issue 3, Pages 423-536.


Joyce McDonough

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
>
>
>   

-- 
Joyce McDonough
Chair, Department of Linguistics
Associate Professor, Linguistics and Brain & Cognitive Sciences
Lattimore 505
University of Rochester
Rochester New York 14627

585 275-2895
585 275-8053 (main office)

http:/ling.rochester.edu/

L'espirit de systeme, the propensity for constructing complete and overarching explanations based on exceptionless principles, may apply to some corners of reality, but this approach works especially poorly in the maximally complex world of natural history.

    Stephan Jay Gould, "A tree grows in Paris" in The Lying Stones of Marrakech